Just one cheap Easyjet flight away, Croockfield is practicing service design in the Netherlands. On a quest for acing our service design pitch, we stumbled upon the Service Design Fringe Festival and couldn’t resist coming over.
What an inspiration and energy! Although there seems to be a therapeutic aspect to it: what a tough life explaining what it is we do. How do we get buy in on your projects? And how do we prove the value we bring to the table?
We came well prepared. We took our own stand on pitching service design and created a probing tool to evoke discussion. You might have heard of it: ‘the service design bingo’.
The tool is based on the following 5 principles:
1.Explain its value. Instead of focusing on the process and what it is we do on a daily basis, focus on the results service design brings.
2.Make it small. Pull them in rather than push them over. Don’t start lecturing an extensive course about service design. Instead, give bits and pieces that grasp their attention.
3.Use down to earth examples. Keep away from abstract stories, were your audience drifts away.
4.Compare to what your audience understands. Is he or she a software architect, UX designer or business strategist? Tell how service design is comparable or different.
5.Make it visual. Use visuals as a handhelds in your story - for you and your audience.
We’ve already had some exciting discussions going on, and today we will be evoking them at the EY Seren workshop. If you’re interested in what we’ve learned and what the probing tool might develops into, check out our website www.croockfield.nl. Or send a message to one of us, and we’ll keep you posted.
Aafke Croockewit and Evelien Veldhuijzen
evelien@croockfield.nl
