How an experiment led me to an ethical portfolio service design career

I’ve had the privilege of working in Service Design for over a decade now. I am 35 years old and I can see myself working in this space for another 35 years. I can still remember the room where I first heard service design as a concept and realised how the mindset applied to how I think about the world. Of these, I’ve spent the past 8 as a portfolio service designer. This chapter of my career has come to an end, and I will embark on creating new services with a corporate startup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I’ve seen Service Design go from an immature career path that wasn’t well-known to a mature field that continues to grow worldwide. This blog will reflect on my personal journey navigating a portfolio career as a service designer.

Refining what it means to have a career

Service Design is becoming much more mainstream, and there’s a fantastic wealth of talent focused on creating good design across different industries. I’m a big fan of Birgit Mager from the Service Design Network’s vision of the future “where service design is a norm,” and I’ve been privileged to see this vision slowly unravel in recent years.

The continued increase in design maturity and high reception of service design also means that more of us are pursuing portfolio careers over in-house roles. However, freelancing is not an easy endeavour. As such, it can be easy to fall into the trap of giving up your moral values to pay your bills. But you CAN pay your bills and retain your moral compass. Setting out what makes a great right projects or client too me some time. You can read more about here .

The benefits of a portfolio career

Working for yourself is not for everyone!

The safety, security, structure and scale of working for someone else is not a bad thing. And I have seen many of my friends lead amazing full-time careers. I wanted to have the opportunity to experiment as, over the years, my curiosity has led me to some amazing opportunities.

The old adage of “being your own boss” rings true for portfolio Service Design. However, going out yourself can be a risk. A portfolio career comes with the freedom of working on projects that feed your soul and at your own pace. In addition, it can broaden your horizons. Working in a singular organisation often means working within similar projects, providing limited opportunities for growth.

Working across different areas allows you to find your niche. I’ve been lucky enough to work across several service design areas. Over time, I’ve discovered things that I do and don’t like about working in these different areas. So, having a portfolio career means I can do the things that excite me.

There are so many career paths to consider as you navigate your own path in design . When you work in a design agency or micro-consultancy firm, you may be thrown into a project that goes against your moral compass. As a freelancer, you can choose the projects that connect with your values.

As a portfolio service designer, I get to simultaneously feed my soul and earn a profit. I have a 70/30 split of projects. This means 70% of my clients are big organizations, which allows me to pay the bills. The other 30% are people and organizations who may not otherwise afford my rates. This might be communities, charities, startups, and underrepresented individuals. That balance allows me to pay my bills and feed my soul.

The challenges of a portfolio service design career

Although Service Design has significantly matured, getting stakeholders onboard is sometimes a challenge. This means you’ll likely find yourself in several scenarios where you have to provide evidence of the impact of your design so you can get different stakeholders onboard.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to getting different individuals and organisations onboard. So, you’ll need both data-driven and vision-inspired approaches. A vision-inspired approach allows you to show what you’re developing and share that story across.

Data-driven evidence is often preferable when you’re trying to get non-designers onboard. It provides some level of validation that allows stakeholders to make decisions about improving a design process, improving a service, or reimagining current processes.

The most important aspect of the stakeholder buy-in process is speaking to different stakeholders. As you’re engaging with an organization, your role is to help them think beyond what they think the solution is. Help them map out the different stakeholders who might be impacted by the services you’re designing.

Identify what people need from around the business and have these conversations with the relevant stakeholders early on. Understand what the organisation needs and make sure that you can highlight those benefits when you’re developing a new service.

Identifying weak signals or trends that can help create a future or opportunity is crucial. Identify and map out potential shifts in the market. You can then figure out what solutions would best mitigate those future shifts. This will require a certain level of foresight on both your end and on the end of the organisation’s leadership. It’s crucial to ensure that you’re aligned on the vision.

Prioritise your continued education as a designer

Service Design is an ever-evolving field. As such, it’s important to keep up to speed with trends and philosophies that can make you an even better designer. You can brush up on your Service Design knowledge through podcasts, conferences, and books, among other sources.

It’s equally important to diversify your knowledge areas. I love reading business, psychology, and history books, for example. This allows me to draw wisdom from different schools of thought. Two books have particularly helped me think differently as a service designer – ‘Give and Take’ by Adam Grant and ‘Justice: What’s the right thing to do?’ by Michael Sandel.

Adam Grant’s book is incredibly important for service designers. We’re often thrown into complex corporate environments and communities with different relationships to navigate. This makes understanding who you’re working with and how you can help them very important. Grant highlights the importance of thinking about value exchange while also bringing empathy.

Michael Sandel’s focus is mostly on moral intelligence – knowing what the right thing to do is. This can be quite blurry, especially when you need to design a service for the right people while also empowering employees or other people who may be ‘invisible’ across the service. Sandel highlights incredibly important aspects of ethics, morality, and justice.

Diversifying your sources and areas of knowledge will help you understand how you can respect and represent different stakeholders across the journey. It can equip you with the skills you need to think about the people who are directly or indirectly impacted by the service you’re improving or developing.

The traits of a moral service designer

As a portfolio service designer, you’ll find yourself taking on multiple roles throughout the process. And so, you’ll need to have all five different levels of intelligence – emotional quotient (EQ), intelligence quotient (IQ), morality, resilience, and political intelligence.

IQ is the ability to absorb information, make sense of it, and share it over time. EQ, on the other hand, refers to the ability to empathize, connect with people, and build great relationships over time. A lot of designers have excellent EQ. Morality is the ability to know what the right thing to do is.

You may come across several challenges and push-back when you’re working across an organisation. So, it’s crucial to have a level of resilience as well. Similarly, these challenges will require some political intelligence. Political intelligence will help you find ways to build relationships and connect with the right non-designer allies. This will considerably help you get different people to see the bigger picture.

Political intelligence will help you navigate complex environments, so it’s important to nurture it as you pursue your portfolio career. These traits will be particularly necessary when you find yourself in organisations where there is no clear leadership structure or where there are silos in the business.

The importance of financial literacy

An in-house Service Design job comes with the security of a regular income. This often means that administrative duties related to your salary and taxation are passively taken care of. As a freelancer or portfolio Service Designer, all administrative duties are your responsibility. So, financial literacy is imperative.

Poor financial literacy can lead to you accepting projects that go against your moral compass because you’re in a financial bind. Luckily, I’ve always been financially literate enough to understand when to balance my own accounts and make the right decisions over time.

As you learn to manage your finances, it’s important to remember that money is important, but it’s not everything. Although money makes life easier, saying “no” to things that do not align with your values does feel better. Money will come around later on.

1.????? Think about your burn rate

Starting a business can expense and in no time you can find yourself lose on money in no time if you think about your burn rate. This is the pace you spend money to cover overhead costs before making any profit. Luckily the overhead and start up costs for being a freelancer can be afford compared to other high entry businesses. By keeping a close eye on the money you are spending helps you plan out your work and also helps you forecast the amount of projects/ clients you need. ?

2.????? Think about your runway.

The first thing to consider is how much money you have saved up. When you have a portfolio career, there might be a period where you don’t take any work for months. I have a run weight of six months to a year of savings. This ensures that I don’t need to worry about jumping on a project that does not align with my moral compass.

As a contractor, you’re not always going to get paid straight away. The client might take months to pay you. As such, you need to have a run rate/weight of at least six months.

3.????? Think about your margin of safety.

The margin of safety is the percentage of profit that’s left over every month for a project. As someone with a portfolio career, I have my own business. As a result, there’s a lot of overhead to consider. This is in addition to rent, living expenses, business insurance, and an accountant to pay for.

So, making sure that I know my margin of safety and how much I need to charge a client for a project is always important. This ensures that I don’t feel bitter at any stage at the end of the project.

Developing your portfolio as a new designer

While my portfolio career is an absolute privilege, I treasure my experiences as an in-house service designer. These experiences allowed me to discover my likes and dislikes. As such, I would always recommend developing your range of experience before starting your portfolio career.

The experience is important because it shows that you can do the work. The main reason someone would get a contractor compared to a permanent member of staff is because they understand there’s a direct need for something to be done. So, you need to deliver value from Day 1. That’s something a lot of new service designers may not understand.

Go into a company or agency where you can have a flavour of different things because you don’t know you dislike until you try it. I’ve worked with certain companies where I thought it would be interesting work, but I later realised that the culture and industry was not entirely right for me.

If you’re trying to develop a portfolio career, it can be quite competitive. So, having a clear value proposition where you know what you’re good at and how you can add value to a client is very critical.

Some of the best ways to find clients

One of the most important things is building a network and making sure you’ve got a clear value proposition. My network has helped me find opportunities, and I attribute that to having a clear value proposition.

When people see me as someone who can work on certain projects, they know me as an individual who can add value to their project. One consultancy firm I worked with said they approached me because they had a “Daniel-shaped” project. They know what I’m good at and what I’m passionate about, so they knew I’d be perfect for the project.

If you don’t have a vast network, you reach out to specialised recruiters that focus on freelance and contract opportunities. You can also serve as a contractor or micro-agency.

A portfolio career can be quite lonely, but there are also networks of freelancing groups out there. Such networks can help share ideas around billing, dealing with difficult clients, and discussing issues around clients who might not pay properly.

If you don’t have a good network, try to figure out if you can work with an agency as an associate or find other freelancers and bid on projects as a small collective. That’s another great way to build your network and find opportunities.

As you prepare to embark on your portfolio career, compile a list of things you need to consider before you get into freelancing. If you’re working with a great recruiter, they can advise you on some of the things you need to consider when you’re setting up your own agency. So, build a good network and reach out to other freelancers. This way, you’ll understand what you’re getting into before you take that leap.