Service Design Show

Wondering how to pitch journey management to your team or if you should attend the biggest event in the space? TheyDo CEO Jochem van der Veer shares a brilliant flowchart to help you decide exactly who needs to be in the room.
In this final installment of our special Beyond The Map series, we explore unconventional advice on event attendance. Jochem breaks down the exact steps to figure out your next move and how to drive real change in your organization.📍In This EpisodeThe Unconventional Pitch: Why Jochem says you absolutely should not buy a ticket if you are in doubt.The Decision Flowchart: How to know if you should do discovery work alone or bring the ultimate problem owner.Series Wrap Up: A final look at our special series and what to expect on the ground in London.If you could invite one person from your organization to a journey management conference, who would it be? Drop a comment below and let us know. If you are coming to London, definitely reach out so we can shake hands at the event.
Enjoy and keep bringing people along.Be well,~ Marc--- [ 1. GUIDE ] --- 00:00 Introduction 04:15 Origins 07:15 Expectations 10:15 Venue 12:45 The Flowchart 16:30 Sponsor Balance 19:30 Surprises 23:45 Keynotes 24:45 Tickets --- [ 2. LINKS & RESOURCES ] --- Jochem's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochemvanderveer/Beyond The Map Conference - beyondthemap.comSpecial Discount: Use code SDS26 for 25% off your ticket. --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] --- Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle ---[4. FIND THE SHOW ON] ---Youtube ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/btm26-jochem-youtubeSpotify ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/btm26-jochem-spotifyApple ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/btm26-jochem-appleSnipd ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/btm26-jochem-snipd

Karen Hentschel is a service designer and co-founder of Simply Onno, which makes medical documents easier to understand. She explores listening as a trainable design skill, her 15-minute practice, and the challenge of resisting solution mode. They also discuss plain-language healthcare, useful criticism, strong opinions, professional identity, and pausing before difficult decisions.

Cecilie Kobbelgaard is a Danish service design and customer experience professional who leads journey management capability at Grundfos. She shares the messy reality of embedding journey management in a 21,000-person organization, why mapping is the easy part, and how tea-fueled conversations, plain language, and persistence help turn buzzwords into everyday value.

Lara Salinas, a service design researcher and educator working with UK local government, explores why empathy alone cannot transform broken services. She discusses efficiency’s human cost, community gardening as a model for collaboration, responsible compromises, and navigating organizational resistance. The conversation also examines love, reflection, richer impact measures, and designing services that make life happier.

Stefan Wörnle, Senior Manager of Global Customer Experience at MediaMarktSaturn, explores why strong service design ideas stall after the workshop. He reverse-engineers a repair improvement that shipped quickly, revealing the role of management attention, compelling data, operative KPIs, strategic sponsorship, and program management. The conversation also covers journey management, international collaboration, and balancing AI with human judgment.

Mariana Salgado is an Argentinian service designer in Finland, working on greenhouse-gas measurement services and public-sector design networks. She explores activism through inclusive design, asking who gets left aside, and the challenge of serving everyone when language and literacy vary. She also shares Spanish-speaking design perspectives, community-building lessons, design research without jargon, and why deep listening may be design’s most overlooked skill.

Zac Heisey, a healthcare experience designer, and Jeff Hoekwater, a former museum and exhibition designer turned service design leader, explore the workplace behind the org chart. They discuss why job descriptions can mislead, how to map hidden power structures, and when to fight or move on. They also unpack job-search strategies, the limits of “delight,” professional missteps, and what progress really looks like in-house.

Ida Persson is a social impact and climate-focused designer, formerly with IDEO Munich and founder of Design Shifts. She discusses escaping the achievement treadmill, why corporate culture makes rest so difficult, and what IDEO Munich’s closure revealed about career security. They explore ethical boundaries in design, creative work, human dignity, and shifting from relentless growth toward joy and flourishing.

Sending applications into the void and facing endless final round rejections will break anyone's confidence. Learn how to disconnect your self worth from your career and discover where the market actually wants your skills.In this episode, we sit down with Gabriela to discuss the brutal reality of the modern job market. After surviving seven grueling application processes only to receive seven rejections, she learned a massive lesson. Rejection is almost never about your actual talent. We explore how to navigate job search fatigue, stop taking hiring decisions personally, and rethink your entire professional identity.
🎧 In This Episode: The Rejection Trap: Why getting cut in the final interview rounds is not a reflection of your talent or worth.Identity Shift: How to stop tying your personal identity to a specific job title.Personal Futures Exercise: A practical framework you can run on your own career to find your next step.The Hidden Job Market: How to read what the industry is quietly telling you (spoiler: it is not happening on LinkedIn).Defining True Success: Why you need to stop inheriting other people's goals and find your purest vision of success.
Gabriela leaves us with a powerful question: What is your absolute purest idea of success? We want to hear from you! Drop a comment below to share your take. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe and share it with a friend who might need a confidence boost today.
Enjoy the conversation and keep making a positive impact, title or no title!Be well,~ Marc--- [ 1. GUIDE ] --- 00:00 Introduction01:00 Background05:15 Navigating Layoffs10:45 Self-Worth16:45 Career Moves20:00 Rejection28:30 Visibility33:30 Mentoring40:45 Redefining Success45:15 Job Hunting51:15 Future Roles55:00 Final Thoughts --- [ 2. LINKS ] --- * LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/-gabrielasalinas/* Desiiiiign - https://www.desiiiiign.com/ --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] --- Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle [4. FIND THE SHOW ON]* Youtube ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/261-youtube* Spotify ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/261-spotify* Apple ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/261-apple* Snipd ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/261-snipd

Mai-Ling Garcia, a civic technology strategist who’s worked in city government and public innovation, discusses how communities use cheap tools to bypass broken systems. She explores power imbalances in design, why jargon alienates people, and how AI and nimble teams are reshaping public services. Expect stories from city halls, practical tactics for sharing power, and warnings about institutional bottlenecks.