Yesterday, I opened the Service Design Fringe Festival; it is the first and only service design festival in London. Since 2014, it has been contributing to increase recognition, employment and the critical value of service design as an industry.

Here's what Giulia Merlo, Service Design Lead at Cancer Research UK said;

“Really inspiring provocations from @Redjotter at #SDFF2019: what’s the best that could happen if the #servicedesign community faced its privilege and stepped out of its comfort zone? ”

Here's the transcript of my speech:

What I want to share with you this is a provocation and a call to arms. I hope you feel challenged, inspired and committed to act.

My name is Lauren Currie. I’ve been working in and around service design for the last ten years; I run NOBL in the UK and Europe; an organisational design agency and #UPFRONT; a start-up dedicated to changing confidence and I’m on a mission to help women see and use their power.

Ewa and the team kindly invited me to talk about leading in times of uncertainty. This is something me and my team at NOBL spend a lot of time thinking about and working on; there’s no shortage of ambitious and compassionate leaders who know that the biggest challenge they face is learning to lead in times of uncertainty. Is this our biggest challenge?

I don’t think it is. Designers are very good at sitting with ambiguity, we are smart at finding sense in the mess, we pride ourselves in being comfortable with uncertainty. For us, things aren’t uncertain they are difficult. And there’s a difference.

Difficulty is when you have a challenge, a puzzle, a task - that is hard and complex. Uncertainty is when you don’t know what the challenge is, you’re missing pieces of the puzzle and the task is invisible.

Difficulty is when you don’t know the answer to the question. Uncertainty is when you don’t know what the question is. So what do we know?

Science is clear on the climate crisis
We know taxation reduces income inequality
We know that legislation addresses sexism

Yet, designers spend a vast amount of time and energy tinkering around the edges, making beautiful plans that rarely get implemented all whilst sitting safely in our comfort zone.

Imagine what it would feel like to rise to the big challenges of our time? Imagine what it would look like if designers started to lead? Imagine if we stopped consulting and starting building.

How would our days look different? Let me bring it to life for you.

The inspiration...

George and Sarah Aye run the Greater Good Studio in Chicago; they believe there’s still a large number of designers who are technically proficient in their skillsets but lack an understanding of power and privilege. They believe this gap in designers training becomes a liability when working on complex social issues like affordable housing, immigrant rights and maternal health. They are working to bridge this gap by learning from peers in anthropology, social work and community organizing. These disciplines and others, understand power and privilege intimately and it’s our ability to work alongside them, the way that people like George and Sarah do, that may prove to be the new frontier for this field.

Imagine we shifted our attention away from obsessing over who is a designer and who is not and focus on changing the London centricity of our discipline.

The inspiration...

Normally are a data product and service design studio. Founded in 2014, they questioned all the ‘norms’ of running a business, like working five days a week. Some of them had young children, and others didn’t want to postpone activities that enriched their lives until retirement. So they took the opportunity to try an experiment – could the whole studio work a 4-day week and still be productive and profitable? Four years into this experiment, the answer is yes! And they pay competitive salaries compared to similar businesses which work 5 days.

Imagine service design companies had the best parental leave policies in the world.

The inspiration...

Debs Durojaiye an interaction designer at GDS recently tweeted;

This lead Dean Vipond, Lead Designer at NHS Digital, to write about growing a diverse team, from a profession which is not diverse, in an environment where your profession is not fully accepted, with tools and processes which can exclude, and the huge challenge that is.

Imagine this field became known for being as the field of allies? The ones who call people out if they use unhelpful language. The ones who ensure all voices are heard in meetings, not just the usual ones. As Dean says, calling people out on their behaviour is Not Fun (especially as an introvert), but being on the receiving end of these things is considerably Less Fun (in fact, it's a fucking nightmare) so stick your neck out. People like me have a lot less to lose than others do. We shouldn’t be wearing our rainbow lanyards or retweeting Black History Month quotes if we aren’t actively pushing against damaging workplace behaviours.

The Inspiration...

Rachel Coldicutt is the CEO of Dot Everyone, think tank championing responsible tech for a fairer future, her work on defining “done” was published in Cosmopolitan. That magazine has a total reach of over 18.2 million readers and it targets young women aged 18-24.

Imagine if focused our efforts on designing our way out of the echo chamber we’re in - designing tools to bust algorithms and build genuine communities of practice.

The inspiration...

Participatory City, founded by Tessy Britton, is co-creating the first large scale, fully inclusive, practical participatory ecosystem in Barking and Dagenham. It’s the first of its kind in the whole world.

Alice Bartlett, is a Principal Engineer at the Financial Times and she’s the founder of The Tampon Club. After sitting around for six months trying to work out how to get her secret stash of tampons into the toilet in a way that would stop them from being tidied away by the cleaning staff, she realised the solution. Put tampons and sanitary towels in the toilet for everyone. Put them in a posh container so it would be obvious that they were supposed to be there. Ask women to contribute if they found it useful. She bought a container (This one from Muji), and an array of sanitary products, (towels, applicator and non-applicator tampons).

Anna Goss, a design lead at GDS, has been running a life appraisal network with her friends & peers for 6 years - lots of people have asked how it works, so they made a website so we can all do our own. You’re Doing Great - makes it really easy to team up with friends and solve life’s problems

Charlotte Fountaine, a service designer at Public Health England, teamed up with five friends to create a new magazine called Take Care - it’s a creative response to the calamity of the housing crisis. She started the publication in an attempt to process “what the fuck is actually going on?” It’s informative, digestible and beautifully designed to top it off, Take Care hopes to not only inspire action but also make others realise that they are not alone.

That’s what it looks like when we step up. When we make and build. Our superpower is making the impossible seem possible, the invisible visible and the complex simple. These are the ingredients for changing minds and winning hearts.

It IS difficult and it will continue to be difficult. You are ready right now to begin.

What’s the very best thing that could happen?

Have an amazing festival!

❤️

Thank you to Emma McGowan, Emily Bazalegette, Niall Smith and Dr. Kim Perkins for their help with this speech. Thank you to Lior Smith for founding The Service Design Fringe Festival. Thank you to every person who talked to me afterwards about what these words mean to them.

Dear Service Designers