After letting the conference sit for a little, we want to share our thoughts and impressions of an amazing couple of days in Helsinki. The SDN team and the countless volunteers did such an amazing job putting a wonderful program together.
We can't highlight all of our favourite talks as there were just too many. But we want to share key takeaways from some of them:
✨ Anna Kholina – Designing against capitalism
Anna argued that when sustainable services fail, capitalism is often blamed. Instead of ending there, she suggests this is where the real work begins. Designers must understand how capitalism reproduces itself through everyday systems, and use this knowledge to create space for alternative, sustainable models.
✨ Oliver Muchiri and Naserian Saruni – Integrating Community Insights to Design Responsive Primary Health Care Services and Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The emphasis was on the importance of gathering user insights and empowering various health system cadres to act on the feedback of the "Community Insights to Action Framework". The talk showcased innovative approaches to designing PHC systems that prioritize preventive care, individualized services, and evidence-based practices, leveraging data and digital technology.
✨ The challenges to scale the Circular Economy and how Service Design can help – Gaëlle Le Gélard
Gaëlle started by outlining the current research on the Planetary Boundaries – the nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system. Following this, she brought up some challenges of scaling the circular economy, such as the convenience and efficiency of the linear system for consumers and companies. With each challenge she presented the benefits of the circular economy, that is for example the higher resilience of a diverse system that includes multiple stakeholders.
✨ The power behind service design with a gender vision – Angélica Flechas
Angélica emphasises how the society we live in is built for the male half (or even less) of the population. She describes how the "reference man" influences medical services, the production sector and much more. By giving eye-opening examples on i.e. uniforms Angélica showcased the audience that the sum of all the stereotypes influences the way we work and creates strong biases that we need to overcome by designing with gender vision in mind.
✨ From Insights to Action: Implementing Journey Management – Niels Corsten
Niels describes an actionable model to implement Journey Management in an organization, calling them the seven building blocks for implementing journey management. The core is to start out with a journey foundation. The model then states five activities including the elevation of the ways of working, implementing tools and integrations, organizing teams around journeys, set & measure journey performance, and finally - create journey-based decision making. The enabling activity then is building buy-in and support.
Relating to Niels' talk it's worth mentioning that the days in Helsinki were kicked-off by a workshop day, where Marc Stickdorn held a workshop on Journey Management for real impact. There were lively discussions and hands-on group work on using journey maps beyond a mere design or workshop tool. The participants worked out how to use journey maps to build an organization’s information system that actually helps prioritize projects from a CX perspective.
We are curious to see what next year brings in Dallas, Texas! See y'all there!
