The Punk Moment: Itziar Pobes on What Service Design Has to Stop Doing
Service Design Disrupted Conference, Barcelona, October 15, 16 2026. We offer 10% off all SD Disrupted conference tickets in our 'Partners' section. Join to access. → https://www.thisishcd.com/signup Listen to Marc Stickdorn's new podcast https://www.smaply.com/podcast ________________________ Today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome Itziar Pobes, one of the co-founders and main instigators behind the newest service design conference to enter the scene: Service Design Disrupted, in Barcelona this October. Full disclosure before we start. I'm one of the speakers at the event, alongside people like Lou Downe, Manjari Sahu, Simon Goff, and designers from Airbus, Bosch, IKEA, Roche, Frog and the Government of Alberta. So yes, I have skin in the game. But I want you to hear why I said yes so quickly, because this is not a conference production company parachuting into a city. This came from the community in Barcelona, after the conference they had for years came to an end, and a group of practitioners decided they were not going to let it disappear. We also tried something a little bit novel in this episode. We used AI to generate the questions, and then let the conversation run wherever it wanted to go. Itziar tells me at one point that our friend the AI got a question wrong, which was, I think, the best possible outcome. Before we jump in, here are three things to listen out for. First, AI is not the only thing disrupting us, and it might not even be the biggest thing. Itziar makes the point that human-centredness and customer-centricity were the previous hype, and that hype is over. Organisations have moved on, agency models are under real pressure, and a lot of us are now learning what it feels like to work in a field that is no longer the shiny thing in the room. AI is part of the story. It is not the whole story. Second, service design needs its punk moment. Itziar is brilliantly honest about how we lost credibility. We turned up to serious, decades old problems acting as if the world had started yesterday, as if a couple of workshops and a bit of research would sort it. The people in the room with you, the actuaries, the underwriters, the risk engineers, are experts in their own right, and we need to stop behaving like an alien species waiting politely for a brief. Third, nobody is going to answer the big question for you. Itziar refuses to give one definition of what service design should fight for, because she does not think there is one. Are you a cog helping the organisation make money, or a force trying to transform it? Both positions are in the room at this conference on purpose. The work is deciding where you actually stand, and whether the place you stand is one you can make a living in and still feel something for. There is a discount code for Service Design Disrupted in the show notes, and it stacks with whatever pricing is live on the site. Right, let's jump straight in. This is my conversation with Itziar Pobes. Enjoy. https://sddisrupted.com/ ________________________ BRING THIS IS HCD INTO YOUR ORGANISATION → Train my organisation https://www.thisishcd.com/training → Video Courses https://www.thisishcd.com/courses → Coaching Community (Coaching, Courses, WhatsApp) https://www.thisishcd.com/members → Gerry's consultancy (Service Design and Design Research) https://humana.design/ ________________________ BECOME A DIRECTORY MEMBER (IT'S FREE!) and get all of this → FREE Introduction to Journey Management course with Marc Stickdorn & Gerry Scullion (Sign up for free with an email) https://www.thisishcd.com/dashboard/learning/introduction-to-journey-management → Discover & Connect with others https://www.thisishcd.com/directory → Claim partner discounts https://www.thisishcd.com/partners Gerry wears clothes from Sutsu, and has a coupon code for them, as well as Smaply, Scenario Cards, Unit 1 and more... ________________________ All episodes have been produced by This is Podcasting.
