If you’re subscribed to the Clearleft podcast there’s a new episode winging its way across the airwaves to alight in your podcast software of choice.

This episode is all about service design. More precisely, it’s about me trying to understand what service design is. I don’t think I’m alone in being unsure of its meaning.

So in some ways, this is similar to the first episode, which involved a lot me asking “What exactly is a design system anyway?” But for the service design episode, rather than using interviews as my source material, I’ve dug into the archives of UX London. There are past talks on Clearleft’s Vimeo channel. I made plenty of use of presentations by Kerry Bodine, Jamin Hegeman, and Lou Downe.

That worked out well, but I felt there was still something missing from the episode. It needed a good story to wrap things up. So I cornered Rich for a chat about a project Clearleft worked on for Brighton council. That did the trick!

Again, there’s not much of me in this one. I’m there to thread the narrative together but my voice is not the one doing the explaining or the story-telling.

The episode ended up being almost half an hour long. Like I said before, rather than trying to squeeze each episode into a predefined timeslot, each episode will be as long as needs to be. And this one needed the time for Rich to tell his story.

Ooh, and I even tried adding in some sound effects during that part! It probably just sounds cheesy, but I’m still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Anyway, have a listen to this episode and see what you think. It’s got dead badgers, Downton Abbey, icebergs, and airplanes. Service design really does encompass a lot!