Balancing Sustainability and Business in Service Design with Sidney Debaque

Gerry Scullion (00:00.378)

Well, Sidney, delighted to have you on the podcast. We've been messaging back and forth for. I think you said it was a month, but I think it's probably I'm looking here at my notes here and I think it was April, so two months ago. Time flies when you're not having fun. Sidney, Sidney, the back, the right to back. Am I saying it right? You're certainly perfectly.

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Sidney (00:03.534)

Thanks for having me.

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Sidney (00:16.046)

The time flies.

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Sidney (00:25.23)

Yeah.

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Sidney (00:28.942)

Perfect, thanks.

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Gerry Scullion (00:29.466)

How would you describe how would you describe what you do and maybe tell us a little bit about where you're from as well?

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Sidney (00:35.566)

Yeah, so obviously I'm French. I grew up in Brittany, which is the closest you could get to England in ways of living, mostly because of the weather. But then I quickly moved to Paris when I turned 18 because I wanted to work in strategy. And so I mostly started to work in CX strategy, CRM strategy. And through a friend, I started to discover...

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Gerry Scullion (00:47.482)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (00:54.81)

Yeah.

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Sidney (01:04.718)

service design, which quickly aligned with what I wanted to do. So very, very quickly picked up my interest. So in 2018, I joined Hyper Island in Manchester, just trying to look at the best weather every time. This is how I guide my destinations. And yeah, it is. And so I studied to learn about service design, design thinking, things like that.

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Gerry Scullion (01:21.21)

You're not following the best football team, are you?

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Sidney (01:33.966)

at Hyper Island since then, been working across London, Berlin for scale -ups to cooperate around the Omnispot project.

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Gerry Scullion (01:45.466)

Very good. Very good. Now, when we connected, there was a strong focus and someone had mentioned your name to me before, because I'm really eager to to discuss more and the craft of design and how we can be a little bit more conscious around what we design, not a little bit more conscious, fully conscious of what we design as regards the planetary effect. I mean.

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How did you get into this? Because if you look at your LinkedIn profile and you see what you're talking about, there's definitely, you know, you've been on this kind of road for a while. How did it all start about for you?

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Sidney (02:28.302)

I think a long time ago, and I think it's, I didn't even landed where I wanted to be mostly because of naivety. Naivety? Yeah, I think so. Maybe trying to translate from French. And yeah, so one of the things that basically I wanted to do is I always thought that brands have so much power that they should use it for good.

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Gerry Scullion (02:41.122)

Yeah.

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All right.

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Sidney (02:55.47)

What good is it was for me to define over the years. And so over time I started to, you know, what I was saying is working in customer experience strategy. And I just realized that first of all, we don't really much have the depth in terms of trying to nudge because when you work at the brand level and not so much at the company level. And so I thought, you know, it's interesting, but it's not quite there yet. Hence me starting to look into service design because.

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Gerry Scullion (03:00.122)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (03:17.69)

Yeah.

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Sidney (03:25.166)

I don't know if you've seen the full stack service designed by Sarah Drummond, which I think like, yeah, it's like a very, very good example of showing the different layers that make up a company and a service from front -end, back -end, down to like the company culture. And I think this is where I like to work the most. And so I just started to build up interest through different research projects. My master's thesis at Hyper -Iodon was,

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Gerry Scullion (03:39.738)

Yeah.

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Sidney (03:54.318)

around autonomous vehicles. And the whole question was, what's in it for customers and the users in the end? Because at the time it was 2018, so it was the hot topic of the year, which was trying to understand since autonomous vehicles are going to revolutionize everything from the way people live to city landscape to the way we go on holidays and everything like that, what's in it for the people who actually use it?

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And I looked at research and at the time it was very much things like they're going to watch TV, watch Netflix, sleep and work. Okay. Great. You know, two of them are just more around the consumption and production and you know, you can rest and sleep, whatever, you know, doing either all. And it's that little bit. So I grew up with my mom and as I said, like Britain is the countryside. And so whenever you have to go somewhere, you need to drive.

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Gerry Scullion (04:24.378)

Absolutely.

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Gerry Scullion (04:41.402)

Yeah.

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Sidney (04:52.366)

And I remember that my mom was always saying like, she likes to drive because it's a moment for her to stop and reflect. And whenever she has issues and thing, because it's a low cognitive activity, she can think about things. It's like a good time to pause. So I started to think around, you know, if we start to compress time for people to consume more or produce more, when do people have time for themselves? So yeah, basically this is like those kind of...

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Gerry Scullion (04:58.618)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (05:05.302)

Yeah, to reflect.

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Gerry Scullion (05:17.85)

Yeah.

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Sidney (05:21.806)

topics that were thinking really started to kick in and to look at the impact of the things we design on people and by the way of that on the planet, society and things like that. And then I just continued through work, research projects and things like that.

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Gerry Scullion (05:36.506)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (05:43.866)

How do you frame what you do when you're because you're freelance. You work freelance as a service designer. And there's obviously it. Well, I'm saying there's obviously the most likely attention there of trying to pick up work that pays the bills. And then there's obviously this other side where we all need to be more aware of the work that we're doing, what we're producing and saying no to the work that doesn't align to our values. Not everyone can do that. So talk to me around that tension and how you rationalize it.

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Sidney (06:13.696)

It's a very, very good point. I think rationalizing it, it's not that easy. And just on an ongoing basis and a daily basis, there's hard line. And I think, you know, basically where I'm just saying, no, I'm not going to work for you. And that can be all of the BP and the oil and gas and things like that. And I just, it's mostly coming from a rational, even though it's...

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for their sustainable teams and things like that. When I look at the investments they've done over the last year and the way they cut their investment on sustainability, I don't think me working on a project is very much what they want to do. They don't want to launch something which is actually going to be looking at, how can we improve the way people live and reduce our impact on the planet? It's very much more, we have some sort of money left, we have to do it. So I don't feel like I'm going to work with them.

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Gerry Scullion (06:49.178)

Yeah.

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Sidney (07:08.366)

This is one of the first things I used to rationalize. The second thing, it depends, I think, on the moment. At the moment, I think the freelance market is slightly complicated. We can see there's, and just like the general tech market, there are a lot of people being laid off. So I'm not sure there's that big of freedom sometimes to choose every project that we can. That being said, it doesn't mean...

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Gerry Scullion (07:09.594)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (07:21.882)

Yeah.

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Sidney (07:38.574)

that through the project we're working on, we can bring more of a sustainability lens. One of the big things which I'm thinking of is systems change and changing system, you know, has to start somewhere. And so there is multiple things. There is one thing which is just about voting as an individual where you can start to, you know, change political system. And by the way of that, the way, you know, regulations, things like that.

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Gerry Scullion (07:52.922)

Yeah.

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Sidney (08:06.702)

But we can see, for instance, using the example of U .S. in the U .K., changing only through laws doesn't really help. It creates a lot of friction. It creates social tension. And in the end, we end up with, just talking about French election at the moment, far right in power for most of the countries in Europe. So, you know, I think... Sorry?

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Gerry Scullion (08:14.106)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (08:23.93)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (08:30.81)

It's not gonna, you know.

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I was going to say when, when the far right started, well, not even the far right, but just center right starts to take more of a kind of a strong hold on the decision making process. You can already see, I don't know if you follow an Australian politics, but Peter Dutton down in Australia, he's on the right. Like he's not even center, right? He's like, Hey, we're going to pull out of, we're going to reduce our commitments to climate. So it's, it's a, it's a worry.

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Sidney (08:40.43)

Yeah.

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Sidney (09:01.038)

Yeah, exactly.

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Gerry Scullion (09:03.962)

And for everybody, when you see leaders taking a stronghold in these kind of decisions and undoing a lot of the work that we've as a collective, I've been trying to trying to push under values and devalues all the work that we're trying to hopefully achieve as a global global economy. As regards design, though, Sidney, where do you think the tension lies within?

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Sidney (09:13.678)

Mm.

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Gerry Scullion (09:33.722)

service design in particular, because you say you're a service designer and design strategist. Is it in the lack of knowledge of the decision makers within organizations, or is it just something that's fundamentally wrapped up in the methodologies, do you think?

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Sidney (09:52.078)

a little bit of A and B. I think first of all, we need to, you know, I try to make a difference between the design practice and the design industry. The design industry companies, the way they built our, business centered. And because we are business centered as an industry, we frame the practice around businesses as well. And that's something.

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Gerry Scullion (09:57.21)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (10:04.602)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (10:12.378)

Yes.

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Gerry Scullion (10:17.69)

Right.

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Sidney (10:20.75)

that I try to work with the clients I'm working with. It's something that, you know, when I write articles, what I try to come across is there are different ways to do things. Right now, because the way of business has set up and the way the system and the economic system work in, everything is built around optimization and optimization of gain and money gain. Exactly. And so I think there are...

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Gerry Scullion (10:45.786)

Yeah, and growth.

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Sidney (10:50.03)

many things that we can do first at our own scale, which is around how can we try to change the rationales that we use to inform decisions during the design process. And there are things like just starting to use the business model as an enabler rather than something that you have to design for. Something I've been using, working on every time on different projects. I try to be a bit more agnostic of the business model and show that.

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Gerry Scullion (11:11.322)

Hmm.

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Sidney (11:18.382)

we can hit better outcomes if we don't start with the business model as a requirement, but at the end of it, and we just say, right, this is what we want to design. Can we base on, can we change the business model based on what we just want to enable at scale? So I think, yeah, a little bit of A and B. I think there is a bit of the practice as well, which is very much we work with the people that we see every day. And so we work for companies.

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Gerry Scullion (11:28.57)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (11:36.09)

Hmm.

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Sidney (11:48.75)

but we also have the responsibility because we have the luck of being so close to try to move a bit of needle in the other direction.

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Gerry Scullion (11:54.81)

Yeah.

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That's a good point. I mean, if you look at the corporate strategy for some of the organizations that hire service designers, they will include things in there. Like we care about the sustainability of our planet. I'm sorry, I'm really cynical. I shouldn't do the voice. But when it trickles down into the organization, they're still really just doing the same stuff. And it seems like the decision making processes are just broken.

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So the values aren't trickling down into the doing. What advice are like, well, what advice do you have for teams of service designers? Like we can talk about it and say we need to do better. And then all of a sudden they're going to go, hey, we're launching a new phone or we're launching all of that. And we're like, OK, it's more the same. And we're going to build a service around this new service plan of phones and all this stuff. And then we're caught in the weeds again, like, you know.

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Sidney (12:52.654)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (12:57.466)

Really, do we have any power to shift this? Like, where is the best use of our energy as a collective from the design community to try and tackle these problems?

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Sidney (13:07.278)

Yeah, challenge, sir. I don't know for sure. What I think though, thanks for the pressures. No, yeah, I, most of it are mostly, intuitions whenever we can. And, you know, it comes back to the possibility of refusing work. And that also depends on all.

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Gerry Scullion (13:13.85)

I want you to give me the answer. I want to know what we need to do Sidney. In 50 words or less.

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Sidney (13:36.142)

own financial stability and as a freelancer, as a company, that's all. I just do it. If it's possible, let's put a hard line and say, I'm not going to work with you because of this, but that requires some sort of stability on your own. The second thing, and one of the, if you can't do that, one of the things that I started to work to use during the process and with the different clients I'm working on is design principles.

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Gerry Scullion (13:41.177)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (13:53.21)

Yeah.

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Sidney (14:06.191)

I think right now the way we design things and just the way we think about the world, we use a lot of shortcuts. You know, like the car is freedom, or we're going to use workshops because it's design thinking, or we're going to use standards because it's agile. But there is a whole set of layers, which is about the way we're going to approach things. And I think this is more on the culture of the company, of the team, and of the project.

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and I think just like the idea of a side or company delivers a side or service, the way we approach design, the way we approach decision making influence the outcome that we, you know, generate. And so I think design principles are quite useful because they're not there. I mean, they're not yet a solution. The more way that we agree upon to approach program solving. And so it comes back to what is the mindset that we are using.

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Gerry Scullion (14:50.01)

Yeah.

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Sidney (15:06.062)

And it changes the way we frame problems, the way we frame solutions. And because it's, again, not yet a solution, people are more keen to get on board with it. Rather than me saying, hey, you're going to lose money for the next 10 months because of this solution, it's more, let's try to achieve that outcome, and then we're going to work in that direction. So yeah, I think it's a nice way to try to nudge and...

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Gerry Scullion (15:31.194)

Yeah.

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Sidney (15:35.47)

facilitate different type of outcomes and the conversation on a daily basis with the people you work with.

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Gerry Scullion (15:39.418)

Hmm.

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Yeah. One of the things that I've tried to weave into my projects and I'm working on as a consultant is this decision making matrix where you have your values trickle down into the actual items that need to be weighted. So how important is it to have sustainability as part of our project in every project? What does that look like for this project? Is it weighted against speed?

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which one is more important. And we speak about this in the design community on Circle within this is hcd .com with the community. Decision making pieces, it seems to be whenever Agile gets hold of the projects, it's speed and speed to market and like, you know, break it and we'll fix it in the next iteration kind of that mindset.

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Sidney (16:20.046)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (16:41.242)

doesn't really work when we're trying to have reflective practices in our craft. And a lot of the executives that I've spoken to about this, they kind of look at me as if I'm like, well, slow equals increased cost. Why would we do that? It's that tension of need to make money. We need to we need to provide that we're actually, you know,

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Sidney (17:06.094)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (17:09.722)

where we're doing the right thing for the business. So it's the business and the planet then, and that's the disconnect. And most people say, well, that's the government's responsibility to regulate the organizations and the businesses to make sure that they've got a responsibility. And I argue that it's not the government's responsibility. Like they cannot be everywhere at once. I mean, it's such a.

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Sidney (17:32.078)

especially then when we're playing them.

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Gerry Scullion (17:35.034)

Yeah, absolutely. It's very easy to blame the government. So yeah, like point the finger at the government's all the politicians are at fault for absolutely everything. You know, there's later on the road outside my house, the government's fault. You know, it's not, we all have a responsibility at a citizen level. but I guess it's, it's top down and it's bottom up is what I'm hearing from what you're talking about there. Like we can work bottom up, but from the top down, have you had any interactions or any advice for people listening?

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to try and encourage the leadership to come on board and provide them with the right questions and to ask of their own kind of mission of what's my responsibility and leading this organization into the next the next millennia.

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Sidney (18:23.182)

Yeah.

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I think it's more, unfortunately, a bit of a long game with them. Again, there is a very entrenched way of thinking towards business. And one of the things that the example we were talking about, I think it's quite interesting towards cost. Because you're not suggesting for them to have an unviable business. You're just suggesting for them to have a less viable business or less profitable business.

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Gerry Scullion (18:31.482)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (18:40.634)

Mm -hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (18:51.194)

Yeah.

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Sidney (18:55.022)

And I think every time we're talking about the short term, when, for instance, I come back to the research project I've done around autonomous vehicles, and I started to look at different ways we could do onboard experience for users, there were like multiple things. When I did the testing with users, most of them would pick up something which was around working because it's tangible, because all of the things and all the markers, they just, you know, if I can leave work more early.

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Gerry Scullion (18:55.514)

Yeah.

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Sidney (19:24.75)

then I'll just do it. Then if you look at the reality, when we introduced laptops, when we introduced more remote working on the beginning of COVID, people are starting to work more because they could, and so they feel they should. And so with the other prototypes that I've built, which was more around how do we empower users as way to use the commute or the way they would use autonomous vehicles for them to learn.

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different things that could be just, I think in 2018, one of the big trends in around people were just like, going back to school, trying to learn cooking class and getting other type of lessons. It was like, cool, what if we use that 40 minutes commute time as a way for people to learn new things? It didn't really score well with users, but what I did though, with the other, on the other side is,

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Gerry Scullion (20:14.874)

Yeah.

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Sidney (20:22.894)

testing the different types of prototypes with more like a business lens. And so every time we're like, based on this prototype, what do you think are the behaviors that could emerge from it? And what do you think are the future business opportunities that could emerge from it? When it was a prototype around working, it was like very much converging. So, you know, after one or two iterations, like basically we could sell Prozac directly in the car, sweet.

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Gerry Scullion (20:31.29)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (20:40.154)

Mm -hmm.

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Sidney (20:49.486)

But when we look at, if we look at empowering users, we had like a diverging type of business model. And so what is a new behavior could create a new business opportunity and so on and so forth. And I think I don't remember exactly what was the ratio, but it was, you know, one to five more business opportunities when it was around empowering users. And so I think it's that very much like the shorter mindsets.

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Gerry Scullion (20:50.906)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (21:13.722)

Mmm.

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Sidney (21:17.614)

which is quite entrenched in our society at the moment, which is quite complicated to fight, but it's, I think, quite of the key route of we try to do business in a way that we're going to bring value, you know, almost yesterday. It's not possible. And by doing that, we offsetting the cost on so many other people, so many other things. And I think it's trying to bring back this perspective and showing that by doing the right things.

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Gerry Scullion (21:23.898)

Yeah.

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Sidney (21:45.806)

you're gaining more popularity around a different audience. You're producing more outcomes that actually whenever there's, you know, governmental regulations, you don't have to adapt because you're already setting the standard. And so all of these things, I think, more helpful and you can show so that by doing the right things, you're producing more business opportunities in the future rather than constraining yourself into, you know, ending up back to the wall.

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Gerry Scullion (21:53.402)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (21:58.714)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (22:05.594)

Yeah.

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Sidney (22:15.214)

But it's a long game. It's part of the consulting aspect of service design. It takes time. It takes the right stakeholders to work with. So yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (22:15.61)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (22:24.826)

Absolutely.

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Gerry Scullion (22:29.562)

I love that. Like it's it's it's really at the individual level. So what I'm hearing there is like you've kind of championed this and you've decided to incorporate it into your experiments and you're bringing back the voice of the customer. I hate the hate that phrase, the voice of the customer. But anyway, you know what I mean about the voice of the customer. But we're bringing it back and showing that there is growth opportunities. So you're kind of, you know,

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killing two birds with one stone, really, and showing that there is potential there to still hit those kind of goals from the executive level. They still have to achieve these milestones to show that they're doing a good job. One of the pieces that I really, you kind of alluded to it there a little bit, is around the transparency of the process and showing the level of detail.

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that teams can go to and they're thinking about these things and the consumer doesn't always get to see that thinking. So I remember when I was in Toronto for the service design global conference in 2019. I cannot remember the speaker. So if they happen to have anyone listening knows who I'm about to speak about. They had a hotel in Newfoundland and it was on an island and basically.

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Sidney (23:44.11)

Mm -hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (23:56.762)

All of the products on that island were designed with sustainability in mind. So when you you went and you bought a a tell like a tell that you use in the shower, it showed us the cost of making the tell was this. The profit was this. And the the materials were sourced from here. This level of transparency. And it showed like, well, actually, you know what?

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Sidney (24:16.43)

Okay.

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Gerry Scullion (24:25.242)

They're making 15 % on this and that's fine. Profit is fine. Like, you know, but what are they doing with the rest of us? And where, where does it go? So a soot Sue, who I kind of partner with for the upcoming range of, clothes for the, this podcast, they're made on demand. So we don't carry stock. If someone wants to create it from scratch, but we're hyper transparent about this minimum amount of profit in it. And this, the cotton is sourced and you're really careful about.

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Sidney (24:44.942)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (24:55.13)

Most organizations don't do that. They can hide behind the kind of the production line, so to speak. What are your thoughts on? Is that the right kind of approach of being able to share this level of detail to the people who are interested?

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Sidney (25:13.934)

Sidney (25:17.614)

I don't know about that specific example generally, but I think... Sorry?

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Gerry Scullion (25:18.298)

Is it a cop out maybe?

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Is it a cop out? Is it like, is it another way of just saying we're still going to be doing all this stuff and we're just showing it to you? You know.

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Sidney (25:31.214)

Yeah.

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Sidney (25:34.926)

I think it depends very much where we're starting. One of the things that recently I've been thinking a lot is very much on the scale of design and, you know, who, for instance, I'm going to, I want to work with, I want to work with big companies and I want to work with smaller companies. And it's the same around working with communities. I think right now we worked on, you know, the world and the way it is has been built.

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towards scale and how can we scale things and how can we scale profit, how can we scale everything. I'm not sure that this is something that we should design for and we should aim for. And I think ultimately we should bring back some sort of more human scale perspective into things. And so one of the key idea around that would be like around localism and definitely being transparent about it. It's just great, but also making sure that just like in design and the process of design.

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Gerry Scullion (26:23.802)

Mm.

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Gerry Scullion (26:27.834)

enough.

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Sidney (26:34.958)

We're supposed to work with people, you know, I think designers are just facilitators of something, but basically we are helping people to bring an outcome or we're helping them to do something. And again, as you said, I'm not around business. I'm not around, you know, things in general, but it's around how do we do business? And this is where I have more issues and trying to ultimately a business, a company is just a tool to get something done. The way we're going to use it, the way it's going to do.

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change things. So transparency, I think, in the current system is the first step because of the scale of things, we need to be transparent so people know where it's coming from. I'm not sure it's the destination, if that makes sense. I think bringing things a bit closer so people know about it and we don't need to advertise about localism would be great.

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Gerry Scullion (27:18.17)

Absolutely.

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Gerry Scullion (27:22.33)

Yeah, no, I'm sorry. It's a stop.

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Gerry Scullion (27:32.762)

I know. Absolutely. I mean, it opens up cans of worms because say if you've got a big, you know, shopping kind of grocery store chain and they're like, yeah, we're able to do this. We're able to do it for our pasta. We're able to show where our pasta is from, but we can't do it for the tomatoes because that's it's definitely the garlic. We're definitely not doing it for the garlic because that's going from China. OK, so.

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Sidney (27:57.454)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (27:59.258)

you start having all of these kind of different questions around certain pieces of the business. And that's fine. I mean, sometimes you need to take the first step, the first leap. And it is a really nice approach to try and weave into the conversations. Can we can we really share this information? If not, why not? And what can we do to fix those problems? I think that's a that's a decent first step. And it's also it's worth pointing out, like this.

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Sidney (28:19.79)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (28:28.89)

This is everybody's responsibility, not just design's responsibility. Like we do a lot of talking, especially in this podcast, around this topic. And, you know, I wish other industries were as focused on this stuff. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone else, but it seems to be that doing the right thing tends to fall within the design world. We're the ones who.

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Sidney (28:45.102)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (28:55.514)

We're kind of putting the flag up, I believe anyway, but that might be a bit of a Stockholm syndrome kind of perspective on things. What is that? Is that a fair statement? You think like other industries like do we see marketing and all of these other parts of the businesses like the sales really kind of step up and say, you know what? I'm not going to sell this because it's it's not. Do I do the finance?

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Sidney (29:23.406)

yeah, I wouldn't know that much. I don't have that much experience. I mean, I know that from friends who work in different fields, from fashion to a bit more of like software development and things, they are definitely something, you know, that just hit home. And they're looking at, maybe it's me and my own Stockholm syndrome is basically every much everything is design.

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Gerry Scullion (29:29.178)

Engineers, some engineers. Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (29:37.818)

Hmm.

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Gerry Scullion (29:44.794)

Yeah.

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Sidney (29:51.79)

you know, the way we build clothes, design clothes, design system, design educational system, everything is when we build a new software, it's designed, the way it's being coded is designed. So that approach of design and thinking about what are we going to put inside, what are the requirements, what are the impacts is something as designers, it's literally just our core practice and all we know.

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Gerry Scullion (30:05.434)

you look at it. Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (30:14.49)

Yeah.

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Sidney (30:21.582)

and what we also we good at. And that's where I think it comes from, what I was saying around facilitation, because our real value is helping people to inform and to make decisions throughout the design process, whether we design, you know, policies, services, products, interactions, anything, it's just a process in itself. So yeah, I think...

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Gerry Scullion (30:37.626)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (30:47.61)

Yeah.

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Sidney (30:49.742)

It falls under multiple industries, multiple practice. I wouldn't say we have the monopoly of it. But I see what you mean. And I think it comes back from more the idea that we are across industries. And so that's something that we can see. We work with multiple teams. Sorry?

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Gerry Scullion (31:09.378)

Hmm, maybe he's got better refs.

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We need to get better at that. We need to get better at that.

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Sidney (31:16.11)

Yeah. And I think we working with, you know, multiple teams, whenever I was working for the retail, customer retailer and, you know, I'm not just working with the customer experience team. I'm not just working with their UX or tech team. I'm not just working with, customer support team. I'm working with all of them. And so obviously we can see multiple aspects of the business and we can bring different sensibilities.

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Gerry Scullion (31:43.29)

Yeah.

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Sidney (31:45.614)

to multiple aspects of the business. And I think this is where we go that and showing that by using different rationals, different mindset, we can influence better outcomes for each part of this business, which sometimes are quite, I always forget, but like T shape versus Y shape, can't remember exactly. But sometimes we, I think, again, designers are very good at facilitating.

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Gerry Scullion (32:08.954)

Yeah.

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Sidney (32:14.926)

but people have the knowledge of their own industry, of their own role. And this is sometimes also one of the issues, just put some sort of blinkers on it.

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Gerry Scullion (32:15.482)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (32:25.05)

Yeah, absolutely. With that, putting the blinkers on it, you know, I like to put scrutiny on design processes and really think of them less as lateral kind of processes like a conveyor belt. Start your research. Let's start prototyping. Let's start generating ideas or whatever. Think of it more as a cycle and an iterative piece. Where do you find?

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the most value as an independent service designer when you're working with clients that you can open their eyes up to that eureka moment. If you were consulting on a full end to end design project, where's the bits and that they were kind of relatively new to design. Where do you think there's a biggest opportunity for us to really rethink how we actually work?

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Sidney (33:15.662)

Hmm.

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Sidney (33:22.542)

the very, very beginning, I think the framing is super important and I'm not sure that this is something that we often work on or that much, you know, as a freelancer, it happens to me that I work on project that I've already been scoped.

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Gerry Scullion (33:42.522)

It's inherited. Yeah, you've taken it. Yeah.

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Sidney (33:44.014)

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, part of that scope, I can remember earlier you were talking about something and I, you know, we do the work with end users are trying to look at their own system. You know, we're trying to look beyond their interaction line, beyond the way they're going to use service out of that. And we try to get a bit deeper. We don't really do that with the companies we work for. We get some sort of...

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Gerry Scullion (33:58.01)

Yeah.

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Sidney (34:13.902)

of an understanding. But we will most like take this as a requirement. So whenever they come to us like, you know, I want this, they already sort of framed a solution. None of them really come to us with, hey, I have this problem, help me. And it happens. I think it happens at different levels. But ultimately, and this is what I mean by the design industry is business centered, we became more of...

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Gerry Scullion (34:17.658)

Hmm.

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Sidney (34:43.63)

we became more of solution delivery rather than problem solving. And I think, you know, if we will work more on the framing and the scoping, what are we trying to achieve in the first place? I think this is where we have, it's a bit like that butterfly effect, right? Because we can change the frame, we can change pretty much everything of the outcome. And I think, you know, I'm very interested in the mindsets we use. At some point I nerded around,

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Gerry Scullion (35:02.842)

Yeah, absolutely.

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Sidney (35:13.198)

language. I found this really cool, I can't remember the name, that's what I mean, I'm bad with names, of the speaker, but he wrote it wrong, like all the different languages that we speak shape the way we see the world. And so, you know, just the fact that we have North -South, East -West, or Up -Down, or the fact that in French, and I think in English as well, you know, the way we construct the sentences, we see the future in front of us, the past in the back, but I think it's in Japan, the past is in front of us because you can't see it.

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Gerry Scullion (35:27.93)

Okay.

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Sidney (35:42.51)

So the future is in your back. And so, you can change just because of the different words that you use, because of the different mindset that you use, it changed the whole shape of the way you approach a problem, the way you approach solutions. And I think this is where we have the most value to bring. And so, rather than being, again, business centered, can we bring different mindset?

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Gerry Scullion (36:06.426)

Absolutely.

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Sidney (36:11.47)

to the table when we frame a program. So yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (36:14.682)

Yeah. Really nice, really nice. Sidney, we're coming towards the end of the episode. Is there anything particular you want to give a shout out to anything you're working on, anything you're hoping to achieve? I cannot believe we're in the middle of the year, like we're coming towards the longest day of the year here in Ireland. What are the things that you're hoping for to achieve at a personal level and professional level in the next six months?

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Sidney (36:43.79)

In the next six months, definitely going on holidays. I need a little break. But on a professional level, I just back from France. Although I think on the 21st of June is the best day to go in France. It's the music fest. And it's, I think, one of the first time and the only time in France where everyone is in the street and actually having fun. So yeah, good day to go in France. Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (36:51.162)

Going back to France.

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Gerry Scullion (36:56.058)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (37:01.626)

nebaseyo.

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Gerry Scullion (37:09.37)

Okay, people are in good mood. Everyone's not grumpy in Paris.

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Sidney (37:15.406)

No, they put like, you know, street music and things like that. And it's great. I actually, I think it's one of the thing I miss the most in France. but no, otherwise I think more on the professional aspect of things. you know, I'm starting to really learn more of my consultancy. right now I've been working as a freelancer, taking project as they come. but more and more I avoided, I think, starting my own company because both of my parents starting their own.

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Gerry Scullion (37:20.89)

I knew.

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Gerry Scullion (37:25.082)

Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (37:38.202)

Yeah. Yeah.

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Sidney (37:45.486)

with their own issues. My dad worked so much. My mom ended up here and couldn't keep her company. And he just, you know, so I was like, no, I just want to have a secure job. And I never want to have the responsibility of owning a company. And I think as I grew up, it's more the thing that I just want to do. And, you know, all of this, the rest is non -important. And so I'm starting to launch a...

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Gerry Scullion (37:54.618)

I can't see him here.

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Gerry Scullion (38:10.33)

See this? There's a big smile. I wish more people would do it.

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Sidney (38:13.102)

In France, this is why I moved. But yeah, so starting to launch it and so trying to find a bit more clients working with, so helping them to either reduce their own impact through their organization and the services they build or to actually foster different behaviors and things like that, which are more aligned with planetary boundaries. So yeah, if you hear me and you want to chat.

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Gerry Scullion (38:15.226)

Yeah. Yeah.

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Gerry Scullion (38:31.514)

Perfect. Great.

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Gerry Scullion (38:41.242)

Absolutely brilliant.

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Sidney (38:43.214)

Can you find me anywhere?

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Gerry Scullion (38:45.466)

Absolutely. Well, we're going to put a link to your LinkedIn anyway. Probably the best way to connect and message people. So put a link in there to that, Sidney. And, you know, if you're if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to subscribe. If you listen to it on Spotify, hit follow. You know, did you know that I think there's only something like five percent of the followers of this podcast actually subscribe and follow the rest of it is all down to the algorithms.

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Sidney (38:52.302)

If I can.

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Gerry Scullion (39:12.09)

and screw those algorithms. I want you to take control of your own death. You're listening to this podcast by subscribing and following, but also clicking on Sidney, connecting with Sidney. And this is really important work that Sidney's doing and hoping to do more of. So if you are an organization out there at the moment and you're looking to bring somebody into your organization who can really help lighten the conversations.

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Sidney (39:16.686)

the

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Gerry Scullion (39:39.13)

to people and really inform a better way of working. Check out Sidney's work. You can do an awful lot worse than just even following them on LinkedIn because I'm learning as I'm going along from Sidney myself. Sidney, thank you for giving me your time today. It's Friday morning. I'm sure you've got a host of other things you could be doing with your day. But I really, really appreciate it. You give me your time and energy this morning. It was really great speaking with you. So I'm looking forward to chatting again soon.

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Sidney (40:02.798)

Likewise.

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Thanks. Likewise. It's really great to be on the same podcast as so many important people that I've been listening to the podcast for months. It's great. Thanks, Gerry. Have a good Friday.

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Gerry Scullion (40:17.626)

That's great. Thanks so much, Sidney. Thank you.

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