On May 20, a group of very interesting people got together for the fourth SF Service Design Drinks. Unlike the previous events, which were held in bars, this one was hosted at Adaptive Path, who graciously provided the venue plus beers and snacks for the attendees (it helps that I work there). The turnout was the best ever, and I was really happy to meet new people interested in service design, all of them with really good questions and really smart things to say. In attendance were folks from EA, Cooper, Hot Studio, RIM, and Apple to name a few.

Taking advantage of the space, I solicited feedback from attendees to find out what they called themselves (titles), why they were there, and what they wanted to see for future events. My biggest takeaway was that people still don’t know much about service design but are very curious about it. Many people called themselves UX designers, but weren’t sure if that was the right term for the work they did or wanted to do. “Could service design be it?” some wondered.

I also heard, not surprisingly, that people wanted more hands-on service design learning. While it seems it’s great for people to have the opportunity to get together to chat with others who are interested in service design and have some drinks, they want more than ad hoc conversation.

Which brings me to planning an SF Service Design Thinks event (example). I’m shooting for the end of July. More details to come, but it seemed like something folks would be in to.

If you have any thoughts on what the SF SD Thinks event should be or who you’d like to see speak, I’d love to hear them.

I’m glad to see many similarities between this presentation and the one I presented at IxD10. Ideas that definitely overlap include: services are important, services are everywhere, they are designed by everyone, and they are mostly not designed very well.

I also appreciate another point that keeps surfacing in conversations I’ve had about service design and something I thought about a lot while preparing my service design presentation.

Service Design enables you to move up the value chain and have conversations about projects at an earlier stage – thus shaping the work more, and creating bigger projects.

In other words, designing a service from the whole to its parts allows designers to be more involved in what gets designed and why. Given our proclivity for empathy, this can only be a good thing.

What I’m not too keen on is the separation made between service design doing and service design thinking.

Service design thinking is about:

• Helping people think like a designer
• Helping people focus on the user
• Helping people use design methods
• Helping people visualize

There are two reasons for this. First, I generally do not support separating the thinking from the doing as activities that can be pursued independently if the plan is to actually design something.

Second, as described in the presentation, the activities that fall under service design thinking seem more like education. Education is definitely something that can and should take place during the design process, if possible and practical. Education can also happen without even trying as others observe what designers do during the process. Overtly empowering people by helping them develop their inherent capability to design is a great service. But I don’t understand why that has been given the label of service design thinking.

Does this mean service design cannot take off in the United States? No. I think it’s got a shot if we can show businesses the value of such an approach.

During the Interaction10 conference, I had the opportunity to meet with Birgit Mager and Shelley Evenson, both founders of the Service Design Network, to talk about plans for a US conference to promote the value of service design to the business sector. One possible location we discussed is Boston, given Shelley’s current ties to Microsoft there. There have already been rumors that Microsoft will sponsor the event. Though these rumors, I have been told, are premature.

But if all goes as discussed, the one-day conference will take place in October around the same time as the Berlin conference. The plan is then for a full US service design conference in 2011, similar to the Berlin conference with content for practitioners, academics, and students. I hope to have a hand in both events, and am excited about bringing the conversation about service design back to the US after the dearth that resulted after the Emergence conference ceased.

While bringing conferences to the US will certainly help raise the profile of service design here, some designers I have talked to either dismiss service design or don’t think it will take hold. What do you think?

Everyone seemed really excited and positive. So we decided to make it a monthly event. Bar 821 was a bit loud, so I will be searching for another venue for next month’s SD drinks.

You can find San Francisco Service Design Drinks events on servicedesigning.org, Twitter (@servicedesignsf), and Facebook (group: Service Design SF). Many thanks to Geke van Dijk, Nick Marsh, and James Nel for the helping on the backend and the encouragement.

Since studying interaction design and service design at Carnegie Mellon University, I have wrestled with the relationship between the two. During an interview with Jeff Howard, a few days after graduating, I tried to address this relationship. It was both a great privilege and opportunity to share my thoughts at Interaction10 two years later.

Talking about service design at an interaction design conference had its challenges. I covered why I thought we should be talking about service design, what service design looks like, how it’s different from interaction design, and what interactions designers can do if they’re interested in service design. I was happy to get a lot of positive feedback after the talk. But going in, I didn’t know what people would make of it.

OH: “When I hear ‘service design’ I reach for my gun.”

This was tweeted from the conference the night before my talk. While no one shot at me, one audience member did say the talk rubbed him a bit the wrong way. And another person in the audience took issue with service design as an emerging field. He seemed to ignore that I said the design of services is not new. But the conscious application of design practice to services is new and emerging. Subtle but significant difference. I suppose this all supports some rumors I heard that my talk was controversial.

Good! I further heard that the talk generated a lot of good conversation. That’s what I hoped to do, so I am happy.

If you were there and have feedback, good or bad, I’d love to hear it. I spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between interaction design and service design, but it’s definitely a work in progress.

Finally, I’d like to thank Jared Cole, Kip Lee, Imran Sobh, Carrie Chan, and Susan Dybbs for their feedback.