How should seasoned service designers invest their personal development budgets?

Often as not, we get to the end of the year and find that we haven't used up all, (or any) of our training allowance.   We know that this is doubly true for more experienced hires who want to focus on "craft" rather that those exploring the  "leadership" pathway.  Exciting client work keeps getting in the way, but that's no excuse. 

In this episode we talk with two accredited Master Service Designers, Katie Murrie and Kim Anderson.   Both work as educators at the Service Design Academy in Dundee, Scotland and share their journeys to mastery.  They also talk about the career benefits of accreditation and provide tips for those considering becoming accredited.

Katie and Kim also talk about a spectrum of CPD options for for experienced Service Designers, ranging for Tuscan retreats with the Co-Creation School, through to free and fun design safaris.   

Links to content from this episode.

Find your SDN Accreditation level here....and find out more about the program.
The Co-Creation School
The RNIB conference talk about of inclusive design.

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• Episode Host: Stephen Wood
• Production Assistance: Jean Watanya

Transcript

  Welcome to another bonus edition of Service Design Yap. I'm your host, Stephen Wood.  As we move closer to this year's Global Conference in Helsinki,  many of us are thinking about how the workshops, talks, networking, and serendipitous sauna conversations can help us develop our practice.  As early stage designers, the signposting for development opportunities seemed clear and frequent.

But as careers progress, finding professional development opportunities becomes harder, a bit more abstract. At the end of the year, many designers reflect on the projects they delivered and feel really proud. But many of us feel quite guilty that we've not really touched our development budget. That means we've not really invested in our career and our craft. 

In this episode we talk to Katie Murie and Kim Anderson about the tactics that later career stage designers can take to develop their craft. We talk about practitioner accreditation and master's accreditation and we also look at formal and informal ways for all designers. To develop their craft. For those of you still looking to book your tickets to the global conference, there's a discount code that can be applied to in person and virtual tickets.

You'll find the exclusive code, the service design yap listeners in our show notes. 

Today, I'm joined by Katie Murray and Kim Anderson from the services design Academy. And we're going to be talking a little bit about continuing professional education for service designers. Hey, Katie. Hey, Kim. How are you doing? 

Very well, thank you, Steve. Thanks for having us along. Hi, good, thank you. 

Just to introduce you to our audience, could you give us a little bit about who you are, where you're from, and how your service design journey started off?

My name's Katie, I'm based in Dundee, Scotland. I actually originally trained as a solicitor and worked in a solicitor's office for around about a year. When I realized that that wasn't the career for me, I really wanted to help people. When I wanted to become a solicitor, I wanted to work in family law so that I could help people navigate difficult circumstances in a complex landscape.

And actually, that was the exact opposite of what solicitors do. From my perspective, there was a lack of empathy within that space. It was more about how much can I make from this one letter? I ran out of the door and found a master's and that was when I truly found service design and started to work with. 

different designers across Dundee to explore what service design would look like as an educational piece in Dundee. So I was very lucky to come out of university and connect with designers in Dundee that were really passionate about taking design forward and creating a really vibrant community of design in Dundee.

My name is Kim Anderson. I also work at the Service Design Academy as a service design educator.  I started off my career in design as a creative designer and I worked at a learning and development company for about 12 years. Within that time period, I started to find out a little bit about kind of design sprints and product design.

I find that really interesting and started to delve a little bit deeper into that. I ended up doing a master's at Dundee University in design for business. At this point, I still didn't know what service design was. Um, Until somebody turned around to me one day and said you're a service designer, right?

And I was like, oh, is that what it is?  And um from there I tried to reinvent my role within the organization I was in to to move into that space really thinking about experiences and not just the kind of visual aspects I didn't realize at that point I was probably trying to educate everyone in the organization about what service design was already.

Um, and then I ended up in the role at the Service Design Academy about four years ago. And 

I think I was drawn by the topic of designing in pubs, Katie, can you tell us a little bit more about that? It's not the traditional place for design work to take place.  

I think it was a really relaxed, open space for people to come into. 

It's a welcoming place and it meant that it wasn't stuffy and formal at that point. Design was a new thing in Dundee and we've got quite a vibrant design community now and I'd like to believe that came from everybody connecting within a really social space and being able to bring their experiences into that.

One of the very first projects that we did was about health and health partnership and working with the NHS. And we even held that in a pub. 

Yeah, I think we think about the third space and most of the time we think about coffee shops and many people spend hours trying to connect to Wi Fi in coffee shops.

But it could equally be a pub and I think the Scottish licensing laws at some point were slightly more relaxed than the English licensing laws. So it would have made it much easier to have early meetings even in bars. 

Absolutely. That's 

good to hear. So we've talked about GovJam and how that led to the start of the Service Design Academy.

What's GovJam, Katie?  

So, GovJam is a fantastic, collaborative, intensive experience that happens at the same time all over the world where people from a local place can come together and experience design for maybe the first time or the 50th time together. Jams are really focused on bringing those different skill sets together.

different experiences, different people, just like you would jam in a music sense. And I think when Adam, who was one of the main founders within the jam, speaks about it, that's the main point. It's that coming together of differences. Bringing together those juxtapositions from your area and then connecting with lots of people across the world in that same space.

The first time that I interacted with the JAM was back in 2017 and it was the very first one to be run in Dundee. We held it at the college that we work at within the Service Design Academies based within a college. So it was a perfect educational space to hold the JAM. And over 85 people turned up. We just didn't have any idea how popular it would be.

And that really spurred us on to think, actually, there is a need for more of this within our area. 

Something inevitable about jam and Dundee, I think, Katie.  It's the 

home of the jam 

industry for many years. It 

goes hand in hand. 

So, I'm sure the pun has been done to death, hasn't it? Laughter.  Tell us a little bit about the early stages of the service design academy.

What were your objectives and how did you get going?  

The inspiration for us was really that there was no place to go below university level, below master's level at that point, where people could connect with design. And off the back of the jam, we were recognizing that there were people across public, private and third sector that weren't in a position to go back to a master's course and give up their career.

for that. But they wanted to learn on the job, you know, they wanted that experience and they wanted to be able to practically apply it to what they were doing immediately. And that gave us the inspiration to start looking at how we could create a course or courses that would support people within their professional development.

To bring design skills into what they're doing on a day to day basis. 

Fantastic. So again, it's this idea of continuing professional education that reflected the needs, the time, and potentially even the financial burdens that maybe a master's couldn't offer. 

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I know 

that you're both accredited practitioners and actually masters.

Accredited practitioners in service design. Kim, can you tell me a little bit about your journey to becoming a master practitioner?  

Yeah, absolutely. So the service design academy is an accredited organization from the service design network as well. So we really put emphasis on continual professional development and education.

Within our team. And that was something that was really pushed for us to try and attain these accreditations to make sure that we're keeping ourself up to date with service design, as well as sharing our stories. The really great thing about the accreditation was that I started at that practitioner level and actually moved my way up to then that master's level.

By the time the first one had to start to run out, and then was at the point where I'm, I actually went for the master's level. And I was saying to Katie earlier on, we were talking about the fact that one of the really interesting things about the Master's in Accreditation and all the SDN Accreditations is that it really gives you an opportunity to reflect on your own practice.

Something that you potentially don't do or we're not particularly very good at sometimes. Being able to capture the things that you achieve, the projects that you work on. And that was something that definitely stood out to me as being a great kind of positive, even just from filling out the application form, completing the case study, I was able to actually look back at all the things I'd achieved over the previous years, the different projects I'd been involved in.

And then at the end of that process, you're able to present a case study that you've put together about a project that you're really passionate about. Getting the opportunity to share that and reflect on it and then answer questions. So it is a really nice process. Yeah, 

often when you're always focused at moving forward, you may tend to under index on looking back and identifying the things that you've really enjoyed.

And when you do have that moment to reflect, suddenly you'll find, actually, here's something that I really love doing. And maybe I'm not getting the chance to do that. The way my career is progressing at the moment.  So when you started your accreditation, was, did you need to have already done a degree in design to start that path?

Or was that something you just happened to have? 

I just happened to have a qualification. I think through, you can acquire that throughout your, your application process as well. For the master accreditation, it is around your sort of Not only a service design qualification, but other types of qualifications, or even just showing an interest in continual professional education, development, it's part of that application is to really show your interest in that area and the different things that you've pushed yourself into as well.

Okay, so it's not mandatory to already have a degree, you can start this CPE  route towards accreditation without one. 

Yeah. And 

who would you say accreditation most benefits?  

I think it can really benefit anybody, especially because there's all those different levels. It can benefit somebody who wants to move into service design, it can benefit somebody who's already in service design, maybe someone who's already in a role or who wants to transition.

Because there's so many different levels and opportunities, and the application process is slightly different for each as well, so like there's a different weight of evidence required for each. What it can do as well is help you identify, say, from the very first time when I applied and was, got the practitioner accreditation, I was able to then see the gaps as to how I could fill that and plan out what types of case studies I might want to capture, what types of work I might want to undertake to move myself up further into different levels of accreditation.

So it's probably quite good for anybody who's really interested to advance their career within this space. 

And can you remember the case study that you presented for your practitioner accreditation?  

Yeah, so I actually talked about a project I'd done in a previous role, which was about inclusive design, which is my sort of geek design subject, and I love talking about it, but it was about a project where I was looking at advancing inclusive design within the product design space as well as the kind of organizational space.

Fantastic. Was it looking at a specific type of product or service? 

So it started out within the product space within a learning and development organization, but slowly through the project as I'd worked on it, advanced into that space of inclusive design isn't just for products or experiences. It really is about the whole organization.

So it was based on some work I'd actually done through my master's because I was lucky enough to be able to do that whilst I was in role in an organization and I got seconded into a product team whilst I was doing that. So yeah, it was really about how the things that I'd learned along the way, essentially, that it wasn't about succeeding in one space in an organization, it was about identifying all the different areas that could be impacted.

By being more inclusive and then how that would make positive impact for not only the people within the organization, but the clients and the customers as well. 

Yes, I think we're very keen on inclusive design. We spoke with L. Beans from Deloitte about inclusive design in one of the previous episodes, and they'll definitely come up again. 

If we think about how long it took you to complete your practitioner accreditation, Kim,  how much time did you have to dedicate and carve out to complete the process?  

I mean, for the practitioner accreditation, I would say that the application process is slightly smaller or smaller than the master's accreditation.

It is about just carving out, say, bits of time where you can be quite focused on filling out that application form. And because I already had a qualification, I wasn't required to achieve that qualification as part of that accreditation process. So it was probably slightly shorter. None of you are going to be doing a course associated with that.

As for the sort of master's accreditation as well, it spent a fair bit of time doing that, to be honest, but I did reflect again with Katie, that's probably because I'm not very good at writing down things that I actually do. Yeah. I spent a bit of time looking through some of the projects that we'd worked on and then writing down lots of information.

And I did self reflect on the process that if I had been proactive,  And, um, reflecting on those projects whilst I was working on them. Um, but actually that process would have been a lot easier. And that's something we're trying to build into the way that our team works as well. From that learning experience that if we do write these things down, it's much easier to then refer back to them.

So you have 

an on ramp and an off ramp for projects now. That's definitely good practice. 

Yeah. 

So, if we think about, is this hours, is this days, is this weeks to complete the application? If we think about people who might want to take this path, how much time will they need to dedicate to do it properly?

The practitioner one was probably hours. The master's accreditation was probably days, because the application's more substantial and the case study's a little bit different as well. As Kate was saying earlier on, that what we do within that space, the master's accreditation is also based on.  I'm looking at facilitation and education as well.

So it's about training experience, which is what we do on a sort of day to day basis. That's why we had a substantial backlog of training that I'd worked on, and that I had to look at to then try and route through to add to that application. So that one was more substantial. But as I say, that's because the sort of the body of evidence you're required to provide is more substantial as well. 

So Katie, if we think about the mentoring and the teaching aspect of that master's accreditation, what type of experience is going to help people to achieve accreditation? 

So they're looking for you to be able to demonstrate quite fully how you would organize and set up a learning experience for somebody.

to come into that design space. So it might be that you're running a module or running a series of workshops. So they're asking you to reflect on how you set that up, how you create that learning experience and how you deliver different aspects of the design process, asking you to showcase the different tools and methods, resources that you would tap into, as well as how you then update and continually iterate on your training resources based on learner feedback.

So how do you take people's experiences and use that feedback to make your learning and your teaching a lot better? So it was a really robust experience to go through to really think about every aspect of your delivery within that education space. 

And does that mean that people who are not teachers or educators would struggle to get master's accreditation?

In that space, I think that would be a part of it that they would be looking for. Absolutely. Yeah, they want you to be able to list different experiences where you've been able to knowledge share, and I think that's a really important part of the service design network is, you know, bringing community together, sharing your knowledge and being open with the community to share your experiences and give people those experiences.

Um, learning opportunities. So for a master's, they are looking for you to be able to demonstrate that you have shared knowledge and that you have made an impact to learners, that they have taken some sort of learning outcomes away from that experience with you. So yes, certainly that would be something that you would need to focus on and gain experience in.

So participation and reciprocation in the community could help you on that front. So you don't have to be. A teacher or an educator?  

No, absolutely not. No. I think there are lots of opportunities for people to be able to feed in. Whether you're in an inside design team, whether internally you get the opportunity to be able to start sharing some of your learning and bringing people on that journey with you, I think you would be able to absolutely use those experiences. 

So we've talked about the process of creating an application. How do the applications get evaluated? You've talked about having a lovely chat. Is this like a face to face thing? Is it a virtual thing? Katie, I've just got this idea of you in like a The Chase type scenario, elevated above the candidate and having a lovely chat. 

Based on my experiences of gaining accreditation and being involved with the organizational accreditation, I've had the joy of sitting on the SDN Accreditation Committee. So I'm now on the other side of it, and I am able to access those applications. And what we do is we go through quite a rigorous scoring, where we look at all of the different elements of that application and look for evidence outwith the application as well.

So one of the main things that we're looking for as part of the, the committee is how you show up in the world and the service design world. So we might be looking at your website or your organization's website and making sure that you're speaking about service design. We all also look at sort of your social media platforms and see what things you're talking about there and whether you're representing service design there as well.

So there are lots of different elements to going through that application and going through the case study. That gives us an opportunity to create questions for the person who's put the application in to answer when we go into the presentation side of things. So. If the application's all okay, they'll be invited along to present their case study.

And there are normally two accreditation committee members there. So that could be somebody like myself from Dundee and it could be somebody from the US. So we've got a mixture of people with different experiences on that committee as well. During the presentation side of things, we give a set amount of time for the presentation of the case study.

And then we get the opportunity to have a lovely chat, ask those questions that we want to, and also probe on the presentation as well. So, after that, we then meet up, convene, go through the scoring together, and then the result of the presentation as well. And then we would work with SDN to be able to communicate that back. 

If there was any areas that the person maybe was a little bit lacking in or didn't demonstrate, we can go back and ask for evidence of that. Or we can set standards that we would like them to work towards working through that accreditation. So it isn't always a straight no at the end of it. There is an opportunity to keep learning, keep developing, to move towards that accreditation.

So it always gives you something to aspire to. 

Yeah, so is that a growth mindset approach? You're not there yet. These are the areas to work on. And so yeah, it's definitely not a no. It's a not yet.  Absolutely.  And if we think about the benefits of having accreditation either at practitioner or master level, Kim, what benefits have you seen from having accreditation?

So really just on a, a simple level, it validates you as a person.  

Oh Kim, come on, we need to go to the pub. 

But I think just like you say, it's not just about the accreditation at the end of the process. It's actually the process as well itself. So. When you're going through that, you're able to take sort of stock of all the things that you've worked on and all the skills you've acquired, like Katie says, for the Master's Accreditation.

There's lots of questions even about your own practice, the kind of, the sort of mindset you bring, the principles and the approaches you use. So it really gives you time to reflect on that. So by the time you come to that, which I can attest is a nice chat at the end of it. You do really feel like you've achieved something because you've spent all that time kind of pulling all that together within the actual having achieved the accreditation.

It really does give you the opportunity just to broaden your horizons into that space so you get access to a few different things you're able to, obviously, Kate and I have also written a few articles together for the SDN touchpoint as well. And, yeah, it just gives you the opportunity to broaden your horizons a little bit.

As I said, from an organizational perspective, it allows us to, to evidence our skills as well because it can be something that's seen as quite intangible. It's nice to have that sort of certification to be able to say you've met a certain standard. People can feel like they're in safe hands and we always see that within our training when we work with people.

We're telling you we have this accreditation because we want you to know that you're in safe hands. Thanks. And that we know what we're doing and we're all going to get out of this training, what we need to get out of it, or this experience or workshop, whatever it might be. It really does put people's mind at ease, um, as well as give you that kind of personal satisfaction to know that you've managed to achieve that as well.

Yeah, 

I made a joke about validation, but actually if you think about design as a industry, nowhere is imposter syndrome more widely seen than in design.  

I think within organizations as well, that design is still seen as that, it is and isn't. I think it's obviously shifting and changing and it's changed a lot over the past five or ten years as well.

Even the past few years, design has changed as how it's seen in larger organizations. But just having that accreditation as well changes that conversation around, you're not a kind of designer coming in with just a roll of brown paper and some sticky notes and everyone's, what's the way it happened here, do they have a box of Lego with them, which we inevitably do.

However, we also have a test accreditation that says that we're actually good at this. And that there is thought behind what we're doing. So it also allows you in that space, uh, validity as well. And 

what's the Lego for?  

All sorts. 

Fantastic. We usually just give it to senior management and they go off into a corner and play and then everyone else gets on with the real work.

And Katie, if we think about the benefits of accreditation that the people you've worked with have mentioned, is it something that helps them in their professional life? 

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I've actually seen people who have applied for the accreditation because their client wants them to have that accreditation.

So I've actually been in that situation where I'm doing this to be able to get a job. I'm doing this to be able to work with this specific client. So the benefits that they can reap from this, having that badge of honor can really help you to be that trusted source. And it can help people, like I say, to even get jobs in the first place and get projects that they want to work on because they've got that validation.

So there's a 

clear return on investment for getting accredited. Absolutely. 

And I think from our perspective, we've certainly seen that as well, especially working with international partners. The service design network is globally recognized. And it is a professional board. Oh, you're part of a service design network.

That's brilliant. We know them and we can start to then build a relationship off the back of that community. 

If we think beyond accreditation. What are seasoned practitioners looking to do now if they're hoping to develop skills and competencies? 

We work with a lot of people at the Servicing Academy who are already working within roles within service design, um, and want to get different types of qualifications, really building up their portfolio.

We see a lot of people who maybe work within sectors who want to Break out of that sector and require sort of evidence or portfolio to help them do that. That's where we do a lot of work through the sort of professional development award that we teach. But also that there's a real drive for designers to learn.

We're probably quite natural learners. I think there's something around someone who chooses service design as a career that we're kind of knowledge capturers in general. And we like to learn about things. It's part of the profession, like you said earlier on, if you're not an internal, even if you are working in an internal team, if you're working for an agency.

You're potentially working with a different client every day and a different sector, a different industry. So you're learning lots of things along the way. We do see people who are looking to build up their skills, more maybe intangible skills as well. Things around sort of presentation and like stakeholder management, sort of design leadership as well.

A lot of people are really. pushing themselves within that space to try and really make that space for design within organizations. So it is about kind of people stepping up their game a little bit and looking at how they can fit within that organizational space, bringing design skills, but also bringing business skills as well.

Um, so it can be a little bit of both. 

Fantastic. And I know that, uh, there are lots of courses that you can opt on to, and a lot of those are relatively high cost courses. Are there any tactics for CPE that you would recommend to Those on tighter budgets. 

To be honest, really creating your own portfolio can be something that you can do without doing a course as well.

So actually, I was telling Katie's story earlier on about how when we were, um, away at the weekend, we got a train and I stood and watched people for a while try to scan their physical train tickets like you would scan a phone. And I thought, these are obviously digital native people who've been handed a physical ticket and don't know what to do with it anymore.

And even just actually observing the world and like I was saying before, taking notes and making sure you're reflecting on your own practice can be something that is really valuable and actually I think people maybe underappreciate that's something you can do for free. Even just undertaking like community projects or Even projects that may not be real, something that's just an area of interest, undertaking a little bit of research with some of your family and friends, and put together some case studies, can be things that you can start to understand what it is you might want to learn a little bit more about, and very low cost as well.

Even just attending free networking events, things like that, I think sometimes are underappreciated. But actually can add a huge amount to your network, kind of meeting different people, but also then being just open to learning new things. Absolutely. 

And I think the service design safari approach, I think is good.

But if you're doing it with your family, you do have to get written consent. I know that many marriages are put under strain when you suddenly start talking about observations and what have you. We, we started this interview talking about how you developed and how you'd reached your masters as accreditation.

What are you guys doing now for your own professional development? 

I've actually had a really exciting last few years where I've had the opportunity to take on quite a lot of continuous professional education. So I've been lucky enough to go to Nuremberg and take part in the, this is service design deep dive facilitation course.

Which was absolutely fantastic and life changing. I've also been Now this is probably the best one. I have also spent four days in the Tuscan mountains in the middle of no place living in a castle doing a co creation school with 20 people I'd never met before but decided to live with them and eat with them and all of this for four days.

It was one of the most enriching experiences ever. Learning about different people across the world using design in completely different ways. It made a lot better with the sunshine and the private pool. I never thought I would do. A design workshop at a poolside, but there you go. And 

who ran that Katie? 

It was the co creation school. So it was Adam Lawrence and Renatus and Anna as well. So I would absolutely recommend one of the co creation schools. And actually they do a lot of free stuff online. They do backstage where you can go on and share difficulties and have conversations about what's been going on in your designerly life.

And they also have focus sessions where they bring people in and you can attend those for free. Those are definitely something that I would recommend for people, um, looking to step up and look outwards into the design community. Because they use a lot of theatrical approaches within design and that is something that completely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but helped me in my facilitation skills and my awareness around how other people work, live and breathe service design.

And the pool and the wine helped, did they Katie? 

Yes, without a 

doubt. That's fantastic. And I know Kim, you probably got the world's smallest violin out to play for Katie as she was talking about the hardships of having to put up with A Tuscan experience. What are you doing to develop your practice?  

I didn't go to Tuscany.

However, last year I did get to go to Glasgow. And 

it's the Tuscany of the North. Yes. 

That's what they say. And we actually, along with another colleague, went to the RNIB conference in 2023, which was around inclusive design and sustainability. That was a really great experience just to see all the different technology that's being used to have like real lived experience in the room and be able to get a real sense of the direction of travel around even things like how Technology and AI are really going to push how people can interact with the world.

And from a service perspective, it's really important for us to start to consider that around what does that mean for us? What does that mean for the things that we create for people? And what does that mean for the people that use them? And so that was really interesting. We also, as a team, sponsored UX Scotland, which was in Edinburgh, just at the start of the year.

That also was a really great experience. Just actually, I'm naturally introverted, as we find most of our team are, ironically, as people who spend most of our day speaking. To cameras and real people, but  most of our day presenting, but actually the best part of that conference was just speaking to other designers and really get in some really great chats with people around what they were passionate about, what people were eager to learn about.

That was a really nice experience as well. As I was saying, our whole team's really good at learning. I think we're quite proactive about. Learning about different things as well. And as I said, I'm really interested in inclusive design and accessibility. I attend lots of free events, whether it's webinars or otherwise around different aspects of accessibility.

I did a BSL, a British Sign Language qualification last year as well, just to learn a little bit more about that. I wouldn't say I was wholly proficient, but I could tell you where I come from and my name. And it's 

probably not going to be that effective on a podcast, but still 

potentially not just  from the actual practical aspect.

I think it just helps from a design perspective, being able to consider a little bit more about the world. So not just thinking on a surface level, we should have a BSL version of that, or we should consider that. It's actually about the kind of nuance behind someone who might be a sign language native speaker.

And actually how you can consider that in a more in depth way when you have a good idea about how somebody actually uses that to communicate as well. I've done things like that over the past year or so as well. And Katie won't see it, but Katie and I have both co authored different chapters. In a book that's actually coming out on the 2nd of September, which is about transforming higher education with human centered design.

So we've both been trying to push ourselves out of our comfort zone with other people as well in a more sort of professional way. 

Collaborative writing is always a challenge, but I could just picture Katie with a head in her hands, having talked about the Tuscan sunshine, the wine and the pool, as you talk about inclusive design and working with RNIB and yeah, Katie, you've lost that one.

Do you just want to take it again? Are there other projects you want to mention so that Kim doesn't come out on top?  

No, I'm okay with my Tuscan experience. I'm all right with that. I would like to add, though, that a lot of the learning that our team does then comes back around and that's the thing that changes the way that we're delivering.

So I think a lot of the work that Kim and our colleague Connor have done updating our Professional Development Award around, you know, Inclusive practices and accessibility has been a massive project for our organization over the last year. Really starting to respond to needs and how we deliver our training has put us back into the learning seat.

We had to go out there and really explore.  What that looks like, and Kim did a lot of work of connecting with other people and seeing how they were delivering and how they managed that space. So I think it's all that big learning circle that comes back around and pushes us to be better in our day to day.

Yeah, it's a virtuous circle. You're never a hundred percent a learner or a teacher. It's a dialogue.  We've talked a little bit about networking and going out and meeting others and learning from their practice. Katie, I know you're due to be going to the Service Design Global Conference in Finland in October.

Are there any people that you're keen to meet there or any of the speakers that you're really keen to listen to? 

I always love the opportunity to connect with lots of people from around the world. Um, and I always think that there's the nice element of reconnecting with people as well. So people that I haven't seen in a long time, maybe even from the last service design global conference in Berlin, I'll get the opportunity to reconnect with all of them again as well.

From a speaker perspective, I like to keep it quite open. And I also like to speak with people in there, the attendees in there and see what they're interested in and not just always go to the norm. Oh, I'm interested in this and this is what I'll go to. I'll see what other people are saying and can tag along with the crowd in that sense as well.

Grand. And, uh, have you booked your sauna?  

I haven't booked my sauna as yet, no. I'm in the process of getting all of the arrangements made, so the fingers crossed we will definitely be seeing each other in Finland. There 

we go. Towels this time, please, Katie. Towels this time.  Fantastic. That brings us to the end of this special edition of Service Design Yap.

I'd just like to thank our two speakers for this episode, Katie Murie. 

Thank you very much, Steve. It was an absolute pleasure. I've had a great time. And 

Kim Anderson. 

Thank you very much.