This might have been written six years ago, but it is worth drawing out again. All 'disciplines' suffer from this fascination with ourselves, and our inward infatuation with keeping the way we work at the forefront. What this write-up highlights is that we need to learn to look at ourselves from the outside-in. An external perspective of our purpose.

Are we really

'the practice of designing services',

or are we designing nice digital products that are shiny?

If this statement is to be true, then we need to ensure that it is the service we are designing. And what is the service? The process, the customer, the employees, the manager, the behaviours, the team working, the measures, the outcomes defined by the customer. It is also about how the business is run, and the thinking behind that.

How much of what we see as service design, especially in the public sector, remains as digital product design?