Podcasts

Welcome to ‘Designing the Invisible, Together Tiny shifts, Big Change’ a mindful by design short form podcast. I'm Rachel Wood, and in each episode, I'll share one practical tool or idea that brings together service, design, practice, psychology, behavioural science, and research. Because the smallest shifts in how we understand people can lead to the biggest improvements in how services and systems work. Because when we better understand what's happening beneath the surface, we can design services that don't just work efficiently. They work better for the people who use, deliver, and rely on them. Let's get started. The first episode. Every service has two journeys the visible and the invisible is inspired by one of my earliest service Design Thursday posts shared in May 2025. It marked the beginning of something that has continued to shape how I think about service design ever since. I believe every service has two journeys. The visible journey is the one we naturally gravitate towards. It's the journey. We map the steps people take, the forms. They complete, the appointments they attend, the websites they navigate, and the decisions they make along the way. But there's another journey unfolding at exactly the same time, the invisible journey. It made up of thoughts, emotions, expectations, assumptions, and relationships. It's the uncertainty before making a phone call, the anxiety of filling in a form because you're worried about getting something wrong. The hope that someone will listen. The trust that's built or lost in a single interaction. The visible journey tells us what people do. Invisible journey helps us understand what people think, feel, and experience. And when we understand both, we can design services that work better for everyone. When people talk about service design, they often describe empathy as the foundation of good design. And they're right up to a point. Empathy matters because it invites us to pause, to become curious, to recognize that the person using a service may be experiencing the world very differently from the person designing it. But empathy on its own isn't always enough. Understanding someone's experience is where good design begins. Acting on what that understanding is. What transforms services. That's where co-design becomes so important. Co-Design moves us from designing for people to designing with them. It replaces assumptions with conversations. It values lived experience alongside professional expertise. And it reminds us that the people experiencing a service every day often hold insights that no journey, map, process diagram, or performance dashboard can ever reveal. This is where systemic service design becomes more than mapping customer journeys, it becomes about understanding the human experiences, relationships, and system conditions that shape those journeys. This is also where psychology and behavioural science begin to reveal what's happening beneath the surface. They help us understand why people behave the way they do, why seemingly simple letter can feel overwhelming, why too many choices can lead to inaction, why trust can take months to build, but only seconds to lose, and why the smallest interactions can leave the biggest emotional footprint. So, when all these things come together, we stop seeing services simply as processes to improve. We begin seeing them as human experiences to understand. And that's where meaningful change begins. So, this week, I'd like to leave you with one practical challenge. Choose a service that you're involved with or benefit from. Whether you design it, deliver it, or use it. Instead of starting with a process, try creating a simple empathy map. Ask yourself, what might people be thinking? What are they feeling? What are they saying and what are they doing? Those four questions can help reveal the invisible journey that other maps alone often miss. Because empathy isn't just understanding people, it's changing services because of what we've understood. Thank you for listening to the first episode of Designing the Invisible Tiny Shifts. Big change. I hope today's episode has inspired one small shift that could become part of a much bigger change. Because every service has two journeys the visible journey we design for and the visible journey people actually live through. When we learn to design for both, small shifts really can create big change. Join me next time for another practical insight at the intersection of psychology, behavioural science, systemic service, design, and co-design. Until then, keep designing the invisible and making a difference that matters.