How design principles help to make better decisions faster / Wolfram Thurm / Episode #155

Service Design Show

Wouldn't it be great if... Delivering a great customer experience wasn't just a "nice to have" when there's time left but an actual strategic priority that guides decision-making?

I'm sure you know many examples of (expensive) service failures that could have been prevented if the voice of the customer had been part of the conversations inside the company. Of course, this is precisely one of the things we try to achieve with service design.

The problem is that we often don't yet have the authority to drive critical decisions. So no matter which arguments we bring forward when push comes to shove, in the end, it's always going to be the "HiPPO" in the room that calls the shots.

Wolfram Thurm and his team were also running into this challenge. It was hard for them to get the value of design across so that other business stakeholders would see the benefits for them. Consequently, many times decisions were made that weren't in favor of the customer and the business. To the frustration of everyone involved.

Fueled by this frustration and the opportunity to improve, Wolfram set out to find a way to structurally have better conversations inside the organization. After quite a journey, they managed to design a company-wide tool that now allows everyone to make better decisions faster.

In this episode, Wolfram shares everything about the tool they created, how they use it, and the struggles they had to overcome to get here.

--- [ GUIDE ] ---

00:00 Welcome to episode 155
03:30 Who is Wolfram
06:30 Lightning round
10:00 What are design principles
12:00 Where did it start
17:45 Living the principles
22:45 What's in it for them
26:00 Bottom up or top down
29:30 When do you use them
34:30 The Gojek design principles
37:30 Supporting case studies
40:00 The workshop
43:45 Who owns this
47:45 Second iteration
51:45 Are there shortcuts
57:00 Where do you start
1:00:30 Finding the mandate
1:04:30 Key advice
1:06:45 Closing thoughts

--- [ LINKS ] ---

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolfram-thurm-1337b2a7/
• Creative Confidence (book) - https://amzn.to/3aIB26U
• The Shape of Design (book) - https://amzn.to/3RG8zz8

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