01 4 pieces
Customer experience and service ecosystems
Treating services as a system, not a journey, and treating the customer experience as the visible edge of that system. Cybernetics, complexity, the Viable System Model in practice.
A working archive, organised by question rather than date.
Pieces are grouped by the themes I keep coming back to. If you want to dig into the library, you can see them all further down.
02 7 pieces
Capability and organisational design
Looking at what it takes to build a design, strategy, innovation or delivery capability inside an organisation that really delivers on its ambition, not just following the ways it has always been done before.
03 7 pieces
AI adoption and the future of design
Adopting AI is an organisational act before it is a technical one, and most organisations aren't ready for it and don't know what to do with it. Notes from the question underneath the hype.
04 1 piece
Human flourishing through design
What it would mean to take flourishing as the goal of design, not problem-solving. Borrowing from positive psychology and trying to apply it to the world around us.
All pieces, by date 19 pieces · 2023 → 2026
AI adoption
Collective Intelligence and AI, Part 3: What designing for collective intelligence could look like
If the answer to collective intelligence erosion isn't working alone better or adding more AI, what does designing deliberately for collective intelligence actually look like in practice?
AI adoption
Collective Intelligence and AI, Part 2: How individual AI tools erode collective intelligence
Five observable ways that individual-focused AI tools erode the social and cognitive conditions for collective intelligence, and why adding more AI on top doesn't recover them.
AI adoption
Collective Intelligence and AI, Part 1: What actually makes a group smart together
The dominant story of AI is individual augmentation. But collective intelligence, the emergent capability that arises from social interaction between people, requires something different and may be at risk of being designed away.
Service ecosystems
From passive maps to active models: introducing the Universal Service Graph
Something has been irritating me about org charts for years. They show you who manages who, and that’s it. But that’s not how organisations…
Capability & org
Designing for autonomy: Building capability that lasts
This is the final post in a series about building design capability that scales.
Capability & org
Why ‘speaking the language of the business’ is both necessary and insufficient
This is the fifth post in a series about building design capability that scales. So far, I’ve looked at why insights don’t land, where…
Capability & org
The shape of your teams: When structure fights purpose
This is the fourth in a series exploring design capability as a system. The previous posts looked at why scaling design is harder than it…
Capability & org
Coordination exhaustion: Why the friction is draining your team
This is the third post in my series on design capability as a system. The first introduced a diagnostic framework; the second explored why…
Research
Why your research disappears into the organisation
This is the second post in my series on design capability as a system. If you haven’t read the first, it introduces a framework for…
AI adoption
Personas and Journeys in the age of AI
Like many industries, Service Design is having to rapidly evolve in the face of AI, both in the type of work that we do, and how we can use…
Capability & org
Why growing your design team doesn’t grow your impact
Every January, I see design leaders put together similar plans for the year ahead. More Impact. More strategic influence. Happier Teams…
Service ecosystems
Service Design Needs to Evolve. Here’s Where I Think It Should Go.
This post is about the future of Service Design, why I think the practice needs to evolve, and what we can practically do about it.
Service ecosystems
Designing for Employee Experience vs. Customer Experience: Differences and Tips for Success
Through the lens of Service and Experience Design, designing for Employee Experience (EX) and Customer Experience (CX) may seem similar at…
Futures
The Architect of Belief — A short story
The clear, crisp blue of the skies, the light rustling of tree leaves and the quiet hum of a drone sweeping by as it took pictures felt at…
Service ecosystems
Affordances and beyond: Shaping Mental Models in a Digital World
When trying to design better experiences, services or organisations, it’s important that designers and the people we work with understand…
Capability & org
Deceptive Patterns and Nudges in Organisational Design
Deceptive Patterns aren’t just for websites and services, it’s time we talk about how they appear in the organisations we design.
AI adoption
GenAI in CX: Choosing when and where to use GenAI
Generative AI is the hot topic of the moment and it’s being talked about everywhere. Customer experience in particular is a big area for…
Human flourishing
Designing to do and be better
Why I got into design, and why we should push to do more meaningful work
Futures
Paths to the future we want: Using Speculative Design and Future Cones to change paths
Recently, I’ve had multiple conversations about how designers can help people better consider the long-term impact of the decisions they’re…