Daring life altering insights echoed in our studio last Friday, as ‘What They Don’t Teach You in School’ took center stage.

With two trailblazers of innovation sharing their views on staying future-ready, it was nothing short of extraordinary.

Jack Sim

🗣️ Jack Sim's session on ‘MetaSkill of Gumption’ felt like sitting down for a cozy, heartfelt chat with a wise mentor. His words didn't just provoke thought — they ignited something within each of us, challenging our very core.

Nuggets of wisdom from Jack Sim’s talk

“Once I freed myself from everything that I am not (or can’t do), I didn’t need to pretend”

“You need to be little bit imperfect to be a human being”

“Purpose of making money should be to free us from money”

“Find your north star  - use it as a compass, not a roadmap. My north star is to make the world better, every single day.”
“Service to humanity - choose what no one else wants to do (I chose ‘shit’ - toilets)”

“Robots can’t do what you can do”

“You disable your brain because of GPS”

“Your thoughts are magnets. Ask yourself—are they making me better, or worse?”

“Let your child be curious, let them be a child, or you’ll spend your life raising a jobless adult.”

“When everything is changing, don’t change”

He graciously signed copies of his latest book ‘The Gumption of Mr. Toilet’ by Penguin Random House | 企鹅兰登.

Charlie Ang

👨‍🔬 Charlie Ang delivered a powerful message on raising ‘anti-fragile’ children, emphasising the importance of fostering a strong ‘locus of control’ to prepare them for an ever-changing world.

He offered relatable, personal insights on preparing his two daughters for the future, which deeply resonated with the other parents in the room.

Nuggets of wisdom from Charlie Ang’s talk

“Kids can do a lot more. But we, as parents, create a learned helplessness for the children.”

“A strong foundation in the ‘locus of control’ is crucial.”

“Anti-fragility is about turning weaknesses into strengths.”

“Kids learning about entrepreneurship is a powerful tool in developing an anti-fragile mindset.”

“It’s easier to win many medals in a sport that not many dare to venture because it’s deemed risky.” (Inspired by his daughters’ competitive trampoline experiences)

If you missed the session, here are some of Charlie’s book recommendations to guide us toward a better future (just sharing for the benefit of all 😉):

• Choice Or Chance: Understanding Your Locus of Control and Why It Matters (by Stephen Nowicki)

• Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential (by Carol Dweck)

• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (by Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

Do these words stir something in you too? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

The room was alive with roaring laughter, high energy, and boundless passion – Reimagining Health/Care was an absolute whirlwind of an excitement! 🎉✨

Spirited conversations on revolutionising health and care took centre stage. From bold ideas to heartfelt discussions, the event overflowed with wisdom from our speakers and everyone who joined us.

Quotes that shaped the evening:

🎯 Ms Lynette Ong
“Let’s unlearn to relearn… embracing the LEAN philosophy, with its people-first approach, has been a game-changer, and I’m grateful to apply it in healthcare"

🎯Prof Uli Weinberg
"Train your IQ, and build bridges to other IQs, to generate a WeQ."

🎯Dr Wong Sweet Fun
"Choose your container – a space where community thrives and all elements work together seamlessly, even when navigating complexities."

Sneak peek into the evening:
🌱Ms Lynette Ong shared her experience of relooking into established practices to truly meet the needs of the community, applying service design. 💡🚀

"Service training is different now; it has to be immersive in nature and resonate with the participants."

“We had to see the trending ‘complaints’ to see what changes we can make from a system level”

"Recognition goes a long way... created an ‘grow an apple’ system to reward the staffs"

🔄 Building on Prof Uli Weinberg game-changing wisdom, shifting from an 'I' mindset, to a 'We' mindset. Coming together as a community to create an even greater phenomenon. 🔥💥

"Individual grading, which we still practice in schools, is poison”

“Individual grading doesn’t help people develop a collaborative mindset."

"We are looking for 'We' qualities—the 'I' qualities will not disappear, but IQ will grow into WeQ."

🌟 By championing a community-driven approach, Dr Wong Sweet Fun flipped the script and challenged the traditional paradigm of health and care. 🌍✨

“Reduce the complexity, move it away from system and back to the community”

"If you want to build a community, don’t be a hero."

"Mattering matters – being seen as important and valued, knowing that what you do matters to someone, and having your achievements acknowledged by others."

👀 In the spirit of community, SDSG is hosting a Future of Singapore Service Design workshop on 14th September 2024! Limited spaces available—stay tuned for more details!

A massive thank you to everyone who joined us, your passion makes this community special. We hope to see you soon!

🌟 The Service Design Community in Singapore is on the rise! 🌟

Our events are getting more impactful, and the engagement within our community is thriving. On the evening of July 25th, Tamsin Greulich-Smith, Dr. Katrin Dribbisch, and Manuel Großmann truly raised the bar with their insightful contributions.

The energy in the room was electrifying, and while you had to be there to fully experience it, we've captured some key quotes to share the essence of the discussions:

👩🏻 TAMSIN
“Create win-wins”
“Plant seeds, they will blossom later”
“Involve people to transform”
“Your future job doesn’t exist yet”
“Impossible challenges, possible dreams”

👩🏻‍🦰 KATRIN
“Think big, start small”
“Better services, better government, better society”
“Transformation can’t stop at service level, it has to happen at all levels”
“Federal system (in Germany) is a challenge for digitalization”
“For organizations to change, culture needs to change”
“Show, don’t just tell (don’t just preach)”

🧔🏻‍♂️ MANUEL
“In implementation, it takes time, lots of effort, iterations and returns”
“After launch it doesn't get easier. It's the same messy process”
“Making services better also means improving the backstage”
“Every backstage process must work to be scalable”

DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS

💪 How to build a CRITICAL MASS OF SERVICE DESIGN CHAMPIONS in the organisation:
“Find your tribe”
“Engage senior leadership”
“Make it accessible - shun jargon”
“Show, don’t just tell (bring people along for user research)”

🧠 WHEN TO BE INNOVATIVE
“What is the objective - ‘why are we doing this?’”
“Find where the problem is”

🛠️ WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY AFTER HAVING KNOWN ‘THINGS’ ALONG THE WAY
“Focus on building ‘designer’s mindset’ over processes and frameworks”
“Create safe spaces (psychological safety) so that people can take risks (smarter risks)”
“You need to build on smaller successes. Success is in taking ‘productive risks’.”
Be a part of the vibrant and growing Service Design Community in Singapore. Engage with thought leaders, share your insights, and help shape the future of service excellence.

🙌✨Follow us Ideactio Pte Ltd and Service Design Singapore for more news related to Service Design in Singapore.

🌟 Highlights from our recent inspiring event: Future Skills = Metaskills🌟

What an event! It was a powerful blend of new perspectives from speakers, and a passionate discussions among super-engaged audience.

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✨ Cheaw Hwei kicked off with a deep dive into the "Paradox of Learning and Solving," stressing that modern job roles are defined by capabilities and  skills, not titles. He showcased enabling behavioural traits that fuel creativity across any field.

“Design is not just a ‘profession’, in essence it is ‘creative problem solving’”

“In future we will need to focus more on capabilities & skills, than roles and responsibilities, because tasks we need to do and problems we will need to solve will be not be clear”

“How do we bring back the creativity, simplicity, and ability to find joy in small, resourceful activities in a society that is so abundant in terms of resources and availability of things?”

✨ Nav Qirti contrasted the single-ambition of his father with his son’s multidextrous approach, sparking a thought on whether our education system and workforce can keep up with. He introduced his concept of metaskills—higher-order, transferable abilities—along with the IMUPPA framework for practical development of metaskills.

“I define meta skills as higher order situation and context agnostic general purpose skills that are effectively transferable to solve a valid set of problems.“

“The whole economy is running on one leg, we are running on function-specific skills; while the meta skills are becoming increasingly important as we kind of go along a life progression.”

“...we have to look at our school system, our work system, our policies, and our culture norms. And we need a learning revolution at every level.”

💬 Open Floor Fun:

When we opened the floor to discussions, the energy was palpable! The takeaway? Let’s do less, play more, and enjoy the ride while building those essential Metaskills! Here are some juicy tidbits!

“The biggest scarcity i see, in a world full of resources, is the time. Time to be creative, the time to find, time to make connections, time to make mess.” 

“Much of the solution is in play, which is by itself some kind of lawlessness and rulelessness within certain constraints."

"Creativity and love are essential, with love as trust—if you felt loved in that environment, you would feel safe enough to be yourself and to play."

"What we want for the future of humanity is for people to be who they are and bring their unique skills—what I call 'sparkle'—to the world."

🚀 Looking Ahead:

The night was a fantastic mix of excitement, learning, and inspiration. Looking forward to our next event and continuing this journey of discovery together!

Follow us on FUTURE SKILLS NETWORK, School of MetaSkills, and Service Design Singapore for more such events!

#FutureSkills #Metaskills #LearningRevolution #CreativeThinking

🎉 Passionate discussions were at the heart of our incredible evening at "Impact through Design in Large Organisations"! Thank you to everyone who joined us – your passion and warmth made this event truly special! 🤗

🚀 Still buzzing from an amazing night with design pioneers Alex and Belina. Here’s a quick recap:

🌟Alex leads the way in Singaporean design, blending user-centricity and innovation to drive organisational success. His journey showcases the dynamic evolution of design careers and endless opportunities ahead! 

💡Belina sparked lively discussions about broadening our perspectives. She stressed the need for a fourth lens—addressing what the world truly needs—to fuel innovation and impact across planet, people, and profit. Her commitment to ethical leadership inspires us all to champion love ❤️and responsibility in business. 

Let's continue to shape a future where design not only drives innovation, but also fosters sustainability and social impact. 🌍

The essence of the effusive joy and enrichment that people felt, in the immersive 2 hours with Alex and Belina, is captured in what they said:

🎉 Absolutely buzzing with excitement! Service design stories from DBS bank was a double sell-out hit!

Narrated through their experience of everyday work in DBS, Ville Immonen and Chloe Seet shared their insights 💡 on driving impact through service design in the evolving landscape of financial services. 

🚀 They also provided a closer look at their recently released Service Design Playbook – a guide for designers to identify and pursue new service design opportunities. 🙌

The excitement continues! 💫 Keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming events – trust us, you won't want to miss out on what's in store 🤭✨

🎉 What an amazing kickoff to the year! Huge thank you to everyone who joined us at the first Singapore Design Drinks (SDD) event of 2024, the "Future of Services"! 🚀

The SDD evening was alive with the buzzing energy of the design community – old friends catching up and new faces diving headfirst into captivating conversations.

We explored the exciting theme of  "Services for a More Thoughtful World," digging into topics like:
🌟 Inspirational role models in service and hospitality
🛫 Airports as unexpected cultural ambassadors
🏠 The vital concept of the 'Third Place'
📚 The revival power of bookstores in communities (Japan example)
🎤 The comeback of live events with cutting-edge tech twists
🌍 Fascinating global trends shaping our industries

A huge shoutout to Norman Teh and Adela Ordonez for their riveting presentations and thought-provoking insights!

Let's keep pushing boundaries, innovating, and shaping the future of services together. Here's to more enriching discussions and forging meaningful connections with the SDD community in 2024! 🌟

Our next SDD event is just around the corner in the first week of April! Follow us for latest updates on Singapore Service Design for another exciting evening - of insightful talks, inspiring interactions and meaningful connections 

Listening to the personal stories of Tze Ming and Khai Seng on their design journey, their human side behind the professional designers that they are, their quest for creating top-class work that not just makes business sense but is meaningful and has created a positive impact on the lives of people and communities.

How personal, societal and organizational contexts shape design and vice versa.

Come and join @Kay Zhou (Tokyo) and @Matt Collier (Washington/Singapore) as they share their personal stories and experiences that have influenced their design journeys - from Fujian to Tokyo and from Stanford via White House to Singapore.

Find out how their cross-cultural sensibilities shaped them as designers, and how as designers they are shaping the world around them.

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🇸🇬 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM, SGT (Singapore)
🇪🇺 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM, CET (Central Europe)
🇮🇳 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM, IST (India)
🇯🇵 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM , JST (Japan)

Click here to sign up > https://lnkd.in/eh8-SRc

Singapore, Frankfurt & Tokyo

This is an experiment. Our first prototype.

In a world where, suddenly geographical distances have collapsed, new opportunities abound. We can harness the collective mental energies and intellect of people despite the physical distance that separates them. This Tri-City meet up is our one such endeavour where we would like to bring design communities of three wonderful, global cities together to share what we know, and know what we don't yet!

During this event, we ran an interactive exercise with all participants (service designers from all over the world) to discuss the behaviors that will have changed post-covid. These are some of the outcomes:

• Preparedness - People desire to have buffers and fallbacks, to feel prepared for when the unexpected happens.

• Mindful consumption - People want to be more mindful of their consumption, to reuse and recycle more, and to reflect more often: “Do I really need this?”

• Purposeful time - People want to spend their time more efficiently, and want their lives to be seamless. In a time of hyper-awerness of “this meeting could have been an email”, people cherish and put a premium on their time.

• Independence & Self-sufficiency - People want to be able to do everything by themselves, and be independent to fulfill their own needs.

• Generosity - People want to be more human to others, and are more aware of those less fortunate than themselves. People are finding new ways to contribute to society, share positivity, and do good.

• Going back - As creatures of habit, people want to go back to the way things were, and live their lives the same as before Covid, even though circumstances have changed.

These insights were synthesised from the event outcomes and contributions from 50+ discussion participants from all over the world. You may use them as triggers to think about how behaviors of people will change in your line of work. If you are interested in learning more about post-Covid customer behavior,get in touch!

Ideactio's first Service Design Drinks in Frankfurt was a swell. Lively and provocative discussions on a present topic Service Economy: In an era where the world is increasingly moving towards 'servitisation' supported by a service economy, how can Germany retain its top spot as the most innovative country in a world, when people will not pay for cars but for mobility?

Almost everyone who signed up, turned up! This can happen only in Germany, and that's the German secret sauce! Great insights, Katharina about the new mental models needed in a service economy. Thank you TechQuartier for being a wonderful host.

Service Design Drinks #03 - Agency vs. In-House Service Design

23 Jan 2020, Singapore

Fantastic turnout, fantastic speakers and an engaged exchange of experience, wisdom and ideas - that sums up our first #SERVICEDESIGNDRINKS #SDD in 2020. A big thank you to Ronald Daldarup, VP Innovations Shangrila Group, and Reima Rönnholm, experienced service designer from Finland, having worked globally, including Singapore.

Reima

"You're not designing a screen, you're designing the behaviour of the person using the service”

”Good service design is not about digital or non-digital, it is about creating value for customers” 

Ronald

“At Shangrila service experience is driven by two key things ‘joy’ and ’thoughtfulness’”

“Industry research tells us where we are now, but user research tells us where we could be”

Thank you to everyone who joined our Service Design Drinks event in our cosy Singapore studio. It was heartwarming to see many new and familiar faces!

A huge thank you to our amazing speakers sharing on the topic of User Research — Xintian Zhang from Nielsen shared her practice of using ethnography as a research methodology for a snacking innovation project executed for the China market. Ideactio’s Yvonne Ng shared her go-to tips for hacking challenges in user research. & Shaun Sandu shared research methods used in the investigations field and the similarities between this mixed methods approach and design research.

We hope that ServiceDesignDrinks can be an informal and welcoming way to truly share knowledge and foster learning within the Service Design Community. Please join our Service Design Drinks Singapore MeetUp group, and become part of our next Service Design Drinks event!

Thank you to our wonderful speakers who took the time to share their diverse Service Design experiences, research, and projects within the Healthcare sector.

Emmy-Lou Hamley from Academy Xi shared her experience in designing Australia’s first ever non-clinical mental health service, the Safe Haven, which addresses the needs of thousands of people feeling isolated and lonely in inner-city Melbourne.

Sharina Khan from Thoughtworks, shared how she conceptualised and deployed the Double Matrix method as a creative problem solving tool when engaging a diverse group of participants to address the topic of CARE from a Sustainable approach.

Working as a Strategy and Service Designer at Philips, Marie Bachoc shared some learnings on developing service design and design thinking within large corporate healthcare companies.

Our very own Brandon Tan from Ideactio shared on a past project: a caring fatigue reminder system for delivery businesses that consists of posture analysing sensors, a smart driver’s hydration shirt, and a reminder system interface.

We are building Service Design Drinks as a place to learn from each other through sharing our experiences, knowledge and ideas within the world of Service Design. If you’re keen, do join our Service Design Drinks Singapore MeetUp group, and become part of our next Service Design Drinks event!

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