Nick Talbot

A late bloomer to Service Design, despite now having 5+ years’ experience applying it in local government and the purpose sector. Whatever your disciplinary or personal background, I believe there’s a place in Service Design for you. And perhaps it’s my previous involvement with many different sectors and subjects, that inspired the innovative work which contributed towards achieving 1st place in the WESLDE trust award for Service Design.

Starting my career with a degree in Politics and Social Policy at the University of Bristol, I thought this would give me a practical grounding in how to address some of our biggest challenges. Unfortunately, the culture wasn’t a good fit for me, and politics felt too abstract or removed from day-to-day issues. I then spent 6 years in finance, tax, and strategy while undertaking ACCA studies and a degree in Applied Accounting with Oxford Brookes. I reasoned that businesses were another big player in shaping our world, so it was important to learn how they ticked. Again, the fit wasn’t quite right, as work relied more on numbers than human interactions. So, I considered the dream to become an Architect I had when I was younger, but never had the confidence in my artistic skills to pursue. And I decided that I would have big regrets if I never tried. Achieving the “top in class” award for Architectural Technology at Inscape – Cape Town, showed me that I had the ability and drive. And mixing creativity and human interaction with problem-solving felt like where I belonged.

The final step was to Service Design, which felt like home from day one, and still does today. And I am now very grateful to my tutors and classmates for their support in adding an academic perspective to my professional experience.

Life-long learner, that weaves curiosity with creativity. I’m told that my storytelling skills make complex things easier to understand. And my designs are inspired by nature, with the help of Biomimicry, because I believe everything we experience is part of one big, messy, natural system.

…I get asked “What is Service Design?” a lot, which is fair enough. And I’ve given many different answers. But I think the best place to start is by explaining what I like to bring through in my practice.

This includes being more magpie...

One of the things that attracted me to Service Design is that it feels like there is a trans-disciplinary freedom to appreciate, borrow, and combine great ideas or methods from other design practices or other disciplines entirely. So, the type of Service Design I encourage is a constantly evolving collection of what works. And I am on an exploration to see how Service Design can be applied. To go one step further, my sense is that Service Design itself is on its own journey of what it is, and what impact it can have.

But ultimately, I think that Service Design is not about tools, methods, or practices. And it’s not about a certain type of outputs or deliverables. It’s about the values and attitude you have while designing and solving problems.

We discovered that autonomous ride services are a bigger jump for potential users than we expected. There are many strong negative emotions that act as barriers to adoption, and enjoying this kind of service- such as fear, anger, and confusion. So, rather than designing an ideal service, we focused on the need for a transitional period towards autonomous.

But our project isn’t just for people interested in autonomous mobility. The real heart of our design work has been around building trust, unlocking new experiences, and encouraging deeper relationships. And ultimately, we worked with our client Jaguar Land Rover, to achieve harmony with our users’ local ecosystem.

Perhaps for our project, the journey is the destination.

In Collaboration with:

Saitej Pisupati

Jaguar Land Rover

Launch Project

Darkness. Cold. Things that threaten to break Aalto students’ relationships with nature. So why not create playful and light-touch interventions on campus to celebrate twilight each day?

This project was sparked by the current Aalto University redevelopment. The plans drew attention to "laboratories, workshops, test halls, and mega-infrastructures". But were the unique natural surroundings on campus being undervalued? There are health, productivity, academic, and creative benefits from spending time outside. Yet even before the COVID pandemic, estimates suggested that Finland, like many other countries, spent 90% of time indoors. So, collaborating with architecture students at Aalto and fellow service designers working with UKAA, we decided to shake things up.

We proposed a collection of interventions that responded to both students' and nature's schedules. This resulted in focusing on the most challenging hours of the day – the darker, colder ones. And in doing so, we tried to create an outdoor activity that could start at twilight and run for a few hours through the evening. By bringing touches of light, colour, and group activities to outdoor locations, we hoped to attract campus residents to spend that little bit of extra time in nature on a regular basis.

Nick Talbot

In Collaboration with:

Social

About

Royal College of Art