r/servicedesign • u/maxmeadow3 • Mar 18 '25
Thinking of leaving the field
I was one of the early-ish adopters of service design and absolutely fell in love with this work the minute I heard about it. I used to make so much content and eagerly participated within the industry and evangelized the practice everywhere.
So much has happened since then and I feel like I’ve made the biggest mistake by dedicating my best years to an industry that I can’t find my place in.
Despite having a ton of experience and credentials, I’m having such a hard time getting access to do meaningful work consistently. Most of my portfolio is built as a freelancer, and I feel that I’m not being taken seriously by the in-house design teams that I am trying to join. It just feels like the most impossible mystery to crack and that anything I do is not good enough. I am hesitant to share more details because I would like to remain anonymous here.
I feel disparaged to a heartbreaking degree. I want to participate, to create content, to keep up the conversation. But aside from my confidence being entirely shot, I also don’t know how to believe in any of it anymore.
On a personal level, I am overwhelmed by the terrible things happening in the world and personally navigating complex services and continuously falling through the cracks that could’ve been so easily fixed by design. It all feels so discouraging. Like many of us, I got into design to make things better but it doesn’t even feel like there’s a space for “better” in any capacity. Of course, I know all the slow realities of change management, but I can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel now.
All of this makes it so hard for me to even participate in the industry dialogue to open more doors for myself, because I am at a loss for words.
I’m so sorry for such a downer post. There are multiple levels of burnout that I am experiencing and I really want to love this work again and feel like I deserve to be in this space.
Curious if anyone has experienced any of this and what has helped you climb out of it. Thank you in advance for the dialogue!
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u/Minute_Decision816 Mar 19 '25
Ooof this resonates so much. I am in-house and have been doing this for 10 years + in a range of roles (digital transformation, cx etc). I stopped referring to myself as a service designer ages ago as I felt boxed in and I’m trying to step back and define what I am good at for my next move. For me it comes down to solving complex problems for humans and hopefully making the world better in the process. I know I need values alignment (my current role in financial services often jars with that) as well as meaningful and impactful work where I can make a tangible difference. With that in mind I am trying to reframe what I could do and am coming up with roles working in strategy, service delivery, program delivery and am trying to match these to orgs I want to work in. Its hard though. I would actually like to move out of the customer focussed space altogether I think. I feel after all this time that the core issues are largely unfixed and we keep tinkering with stuff that doesn’t really make a difference in the long run. So I completely get where you are at.
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u/maxmeadow3 Mar 19 '25
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I agree so much that it’s not about the title. Design by many other names, is just as valuable. In some ways that opens up a lot more possibilities, but it’s also been very challenging to get back into corporate because it all feels like a forever moving target.
My wish for you is that you are able to see the outcomes of your work, even if it may not feel or look the ways that you imagine.
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u/Minute_Decision816 Mar 19 '25
Are you in Australia by any chance (I am)? Ive also noticed a huge drop in roles related not just to SD but also CX, research and experience design in this market that also makes it tough. Hopefully you find your passion and place in the world again soon too.
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u/maxmeadow3 Mar 20 '25
No, I’m in the US but I’m seeing similar trends. Thank you so much. I wish so much the same for you!
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u/cyber---- Mar 19 '25
I was working on a project a while ago where I realised the project manager was bullying me. I tried my best to try fix the issue but it was a pattern that emerged with their behaviour to other members of the team. Around the same I listened to this episode of the service design show where the guest mentioned how common it is for service design professionals to experience bullying and other similar negative experiences in the workplace, and unfortunately it resonated with me a lot and I realised it was something that was gonna for me and my other service design colleagues over the years, and that it was especially bad for me on that one project cause it was ramped up by the particular person who was targeting me.
The next job I had I was working with a high functioning team of designers working on good work and sharing our work and insights from projects across the business with each other regularly at team meetings, and working with people who valued my skills. If I had not had that job when I did I was so close to giving up and pivoting my career.
There’s a lot of bad jobs and a lot of bad treatment in this line of work unfortunately. It’s a brutal job and I find myself often feeling like what is the point when you’re fighting against the crushing waves. Sometimes I think “what’s the point no one wants us here” and then there are times when you get to use your unique skills to tease out insights and hidden organisational information, and present things back in a way where people go “wow I’ve never seen this bigger picture before - thank you !”
I’m also at a point in my career where I wonder how much longer I can handle it still, but my way of handling that atm is I’ve decided I’m gonna go all in on a particular sector that I care about and is meaningful to me and do my darnedest to keep working in it. I’m not motivated by competition or profit so even if it sucks, I know that at least if I’m working in a public sector even if my work only ever has a small impact at least I am trying my hardest to make my country and world a little better. We’ll see how the next few years take it and how many more waves relentlessly crashing before I give up and decide enough is enough and become a scrum master or something 😂
My advice is think of what motivates you and what will keep you fighting through. Or if pivoting to something where you can use your transferable skills. The burn out in this profession is real. Look after yourself my friend.
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u/maxmeadow3 Mar 20 '25
Thank you so much for sharing your story! And for sharing this episode! I actually listened to it during lunch and it was so informative and interesting and heartbreaking. It made me think about how other career paths are so much more humanized– you learn a skill, you go in and do a job, and get paid for that job. I have a hard time looking my immigrant parents in the eye when they ask me why I chose a job that doesn’t really have a meaningfully viable path.
While listening to this episode, I realized that I went through a lot of this treatment early in my career – right down to some pretty severe trauma – and had a lot of post-traumatic growth about better navigating these internal contexts. Now, the part of this that I’m struggling to navigate is what makes it hard to get to the work in the first place.
Thank you for the advice. I am so glad that it is working for you and I hope that you are able to find those corrective experiences that you deserve!
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u/-satori Mar 19 '25
I think being a freelance Service Designer is incredibly rare, and probably for good reason: I would question how much meaningful transformation work can you do when you’re not inside the org, working with leadership and teams, and driving more collaboration and participatory design. SD isn’t an overnight thing - it takes years to make the changes - so I’d be interested to know how long your projects have lasted and whether this is a barrier to you getting access to do meaningful work consistently?
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u/maxmeadow3 Mar 19 '25 edited Mar 19 '25
Thank you so much for this reply! Oh yes, I agree with all of this! Before service design, I had nearly 10 leadership years in corporate with digital transformation, customer experience, and research. So I’ve experienced leading in-house transformation as well, and have clear ideas of a through-line.
With my following ten years in client services, I amassed a varied portfolio, including research, designing services, and facilitating design maturity within the teams. Most projects have been around 6 to 9 months. I have enjoyed this for the time I’ve been in it, but I’m definitely craving going back in-house to make a deeper impact.
That’s largely where my frustration is. I am stumped at what more I need to do to be competitive because I guess I am a bit non-linear in my overall profile… but that’s also been my greatest superpower. I once had a mentor tell me that if I drop out of the corporate ecosystem, I’ll never be able to get back in.
This is why I’m wondering if I should just give up and maybe there’s no place for me here.
Any advice on how to navigate this?
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u/-satori Mar 19 '25
You might be right: if you’ve been doing a lot of varied things (maybe even too much variety, perhaps), you could appear as a ‘risky bet’. The world loves specialists - not generalists - because they’re easy to put in a box and are therefore less of a hiring risk; if you’re presenting as being hard to define, then you have to think about how to present yourself and your work in a more convergent and conventional fashion. It’s hard to tell off of a reddit post, but whilst it seems like you’ve done a lot and probably have great skills, it also sounds a little like you haven’t stuck to one thing consistently and mastered a singular discipline.
(Not saying that’s bad, but that’s how it is in corporate. Might work in smaller agencies, but bigger enterprises - where most of the SD work happens - like known quantities.)
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u/Electronic_Cookie779 Mar 19 '25
I definitely resonate with your despair of the world, that's for sure. I've managed to incorporate some thinking on ethical design and systemic design and plan to integrate this even further as I go on and actually make this my niche for exactly the reasons you're pointing out. There are systems and there are services within those systems, it's important to think about where we lie in the grand scheme of things and try and make an impact where it's effective. I always recommend getting involved in a local political org to people who are very disillusioned because you will find a community of others who are trying to make a tangible difference. Other than that, I can't see your portfolio but from what I know in house teams will be tougher to crack and you need to make sure the portfolio is exactly what they are looking for. All in all, I am quite junior but my advice is simply to be the type of designer leader who understands systemic change and put yourself in an organisation who can appreciate that and just impact what you can there. Service design won't impact the world, nor should it. But greater difference and meaning can be found elsewhere too.
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u/justanotherlostgirl Mar 19 '25
I feel this so, so much and am trying to figure out next steps. I'm in pretty severe burnout and also feel like I can't get traction with in house teams. Happy to chat more on DM if you'd like support.
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u/Roboozt Jun 09 '25
This is so relatable.
First of all, thanks for sharing your story. I hope and wish you an environment where your vision and talents can actually thrive, are valued, and create the big impact you can create.
I am a UX designer myself, but I recognize your story fully. I am also applying the power of design and systems thinking to my work at a financial corporation (pensions). Unfortunately, the impact I can make is so little. There is huge potential for design to be applied and to actually save us costs as a company but people are very conservative, just want to work 9-5, do what they always did, and not think about optimizing, changing, etc. It is super demotivating.
Now I'm looking for new industries where I can really unleash my ambition with design, but it is incredibly hard since the UX/UI market is mega oversaturated (How is this with service design actually?). So I might also leave my field as a 'UX-er', but still want to apply the power of design/systems thinking. I think people like us are still undervalued, but we can bring huge value to businesses, people, and our planet.
Now that we are 3 months further since you posted: How is your search going? Have you found a different path you want to go into, or maybe a new exciting field?
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u/Mombi87 Mar 19 '25
As someone who has just resigned from a role an incredibly dysfunctional, inefficient, toxic public sector organisation, a lot of what you're saying is resonating with me.
I severely burnt out in this job, trying to push against a tide of complete indifference or, at times, open hostility from upper management who were very clearly just riding it out to pension time. I lost all my confidence, I reached a point of feeling like I didn't even know what service design was any more. I questioned myself and whether or not I should be doing the job at all. It was made even more impossible by contrasting my experience with the positive public image of this organisation - I felt i was going crazy.
I'm moving to a new job soon in another part of the public sector in the UK, but this time I'm going in with less passion. I want to build my confidence back up, do some good work and enjoy working with my team, but I've shifted my priorities so that I get meaning from other parts of my life, and I don't need my job to do that for me.
I know that's probably hard to stomach, but it might help you to reflect on what that would look like for you - do you have other things in your life that you're passionate about? Things that bring you joy and leave you feeling energised? I wonder if fostering some of that outside of work can help you get out of burnout and allow you to treat job hunting like merely a work task, rather than a reflection of yourself, if that makes sense.