This is HCD: Human-Centred Design, UX & Service Design

Service Design Disrupted Conference, Barcelona, October 15, 16 2026.
We offer 10% off all SD Disrupted conference tickets in our 'Partners' section. Join to access. → https://www.thisishcd.com/signup
________________________

Today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome Itziar Pobes, one of the co-founders and main instigators behind the newest service design conference to enter the scene: Service Design Disrupted, in Barcelona this October.Full disclosure before we start. I'm one of the speakers at the event, alongside people like Lou Downe, Manjari Sahu, Simon Goff, and designers from Airbus, Bosch, IKEA, Roche, Frog and the Government of Alberta. So yes, I have skin in the game. But I want you to hear why I said yes so quickly, because this is not a conference production company parachuting into a city. This came from the community in Barcelona, after the conference they had for years came to an end, and a group of practitioners decided they were not going to let it disappear.
We also tried something a little bit novel in this episode. We used AI to generate the questions, and then let the conversation run wherever it wanted to go. Itziar tells me at one point that our friend the AI got a question wrong, which was, I think, the best possible outcome.
Before we jump in, here are three things to listen out for.
First, AI is not the only thing disrupting us, and it might not even be the biggest thing. Itziar makes the point that human-centredness and customer-centricity were the previous hype, and that hype is over. Organisations have moved on, agency models are under real pressure, and a lot of us are now learning what it feels like to work in a field that is no longer the shiny thing in the room. AI is part of the story. It is not the whole story.
Second, service design needs its punk moment. Itziar is brilliantly honest about how we lost credibility. We turned up to serious, decades old problems acting as if the world had started yesterday, as if a couple of workshops and a bit of research would sort it. The people in the room with you, the actuaries, the underwriters, the risk engineers, are experts in their own right, and we need to stop behaving like an alien species waiting politely for a brief.
Third, nobody is going to answer the big question for you. Itziar refuses to give one definition of what service design should fight for, because she does not think there is one. Are you a cog helping the organisation make money, or a force trying to transform it? Both positions are in the room at this conference on purpose. The work is deciding where you actually stand, and whether the place you stand is one you can make a living in and still feel something for.
There is a discount code for Service Design Disrupted in the show notes, and it stacks with whatever pricing is live on the site. Right, let's jump straight in. This is my conversation with Itziar Pobes. 
Enjoy.
https://sddisrupted.com/

________________________
BRING THIS IS HCD INTO YOUR ORGANISATION
→ Train my organisation https://www.thisishcd.com/training
→ Video Courses https://www.thisishcd.com/courses
→ Coaching Community (Coaching, Courses, WhatsApp) https://www.thisishcd.com/members
→ Gerry's consultancy (Service Design and Design Research) https://humana.design/
________________________
BECOME A DIRECTORY MEMBER (IT'S FREE!) and get all of this
→ FREE Introduction to Journey Management course with Marc Stickdorn & Gerry Scullion (Sign up for free with an email)
https://www.thisishcd.com/dashboard/learning/introduction-to-journey-management
→ Discover & Connect with others https://www.thisishcd.com/directory
→ Claim partner discounts https://www.thisishcd.com/partners
Gerry wears clothes from Sutsu, and has a coupon code for them, as well as Smaply, Scenario Cards, Unit 1 and more...
________________________
All episodes have been produced by This is Podcasting.

Service Design Disrupted Conference, Barcelona, October 15, 16 2026.
We offer 10% off all SD Disrupted conference tickets in our 'Partners' section. Join to access. → https://www.thisishcd.com/signup
________________________

The Pied Piper of accessibility: turning good intentions into real change, with Sarah Pulis

When Intopia was founded 10 years ago, accessibility was largely a compliance exercise that leaned on fear more than encouragement. Sarah Pulis has spent her career turning it into something people actually want to do.
In this episode of This is HCD, Hyun Song sits down with Sarah, co-founder and director of Intopia, and the force behind communities like A11y Bytes and A11y Camp. They explore why compliance alone never delivers real outcomes, how AI can both proliferate barriers and help remove them, why culture deserves its own place alongside governance and process, and how starting small and building community is often what makes accessibility finally stick.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
2025 Assistive Technology Survey overview: https://surveys.intopia.digital/assistive-technology-survey-2025-results/
2026 Global Accessibility Pulse: https://intopia.digital/global-accessibility-pulse-2026/
Figma Make accessibility trial and resources:https://intopia.digital/articles/building-accessibility-into-figma-make-prototypes/
https://intopia.digital/articles/testing-accessibility-in-our-figma-make-skill/

Intopia's Resources page: https://intopia.digital/resources/

Connect with Sarah:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahpulis
This is HCD is hosted by Gerry Scullion. This special series on inclusive design and accessibility is guest hosted by Hyun Song.

________________________
BRING THIS IS HCD INTO YOUR ORGANISATION
→ Train my organisation https://www.thisishcd.com/training
→ Video Courses https://www.thisishcd.com/courses
→ Coaching Community (Coaching, Courses, WhatsApp) https://www.thisishcd.com/members
→ Gerry's consultancy (Service Design and Design Research) https://humana.design/
________________________
BECOME A DIRECTORY MEMBER (IT'S FREE!) and get all of this
→ FREE Introduction to Journey Management course with Marc Stickdorn & Gerry Scullion (Sign up for free with an email)
https://www.thisishcd.com/dashboard/learning/introduction-to-journey-management
→ Discover & Connect with others https://www.thisishcd.com/directory
→ Claim partner discounts https://www.thisishcd.com/partners
Gerry wears clothes from Sutsu, and has a coupon code for them, as well as Smaply, Scenario Cards, Unit 1 and more...
________________________
All episodes have been produced by This is Podcasting.

Service Design Disrupted Conference, Barcelona, October 15, 16 2026.
We offer 10% off all SD Disrupted conference tickets in our 'Partners' section. Join to access. → https://www.thisishcd.com/signup
________________________

Most of our systems are built for the average person. Dr Jutta Treviranus has spent more than forty years showing why that fails everyone else, and how AI can accelerate the gap.In this episode of This is HCD, Hyun Song sits down with Jutta, founder and director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University and chair of the technical committee behind Canada's new accessible AI standard. They explore her Human Starburst model of human difference, why systems built for the average break down at the edges where people with disability sit, and what it takes to design for that difference rather than design it out.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC): https://idrc.ocadu.ca/
We Count: https://wecount.inclusivedesign.ca/
CAN-ASC-6.2:2025, Accessible and Equitable Artificial Intelligence Systems: https://accessible.canada.ca/standards-and-technical-guides/standards-and-technical-guides-database/can-asc-622025-accessible-and-equitable-artificial-intelligence-systems
The Inverted Word Cloud demo: https://wecount.inclusivedesign.ca/initiatives/inverted-word-clouds/
Connect with Jutta:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juttatreviranus/
This is HCD is hosted by Gerry Scullion. This special series on inclusive design and accessibility is guest hosted by Hyun Song.

________________________
BRING THIS IS HCD INTO YOUR ORGANISATION
→ Train my organisation https://www.thisishcd.com/training
→ Video Courses https://www.thisishcd.com/courses
→ Coaching Community (Coaching, Courses, WhatsApp) https://www.thisishcd.com/members
→ Gerry's consultancy (Service Design and Design Research) https://humana.design/
________________________
BECOME A DIRECTORY MEMBER (IT'S FREE!) and get all of this
→ FREE Introduction to Journey Management course with Marc Stickdorn & Gerry Scullion (Sign up for free with an email)
https://www.thisishcd.com/dashboard/learning/introduction-to-journey-management
→ Discover & Connect with others https://www.thisishcd.com/directory
→ Claim partner discounts https://www.thisishcd.com/partners
Gerry wears clothes from Sutsu, and has a coupon code for them, as well as Smaply, Scenario Cards, Unit 1 and more...
________________________
All episodes have been produced by This is Podcasting.

Service Design Disrupted Conference, Barcelona, October 15, 16 2026.
We offer 10% off all SD Disrupted conference tickets in our 'Partners' section. Join to access. → https://www.thisishcd.com/signup
________________________

Gerry sits down with Sarah Stone McDevitt — a self-described "unstructured data" kid from the back of the classroom, now working in SaaS ecosystems and author of The Round Table. Sarah explains how phonetic dyslexia led her to write an entire book by talking into a voice memo, why we've been measuring human value wrong since school, and why relationships compound through the least efficient things we do: sitting with someone's story, sending an article with nothing attached, closing the laptop. Plus: the five signals of relational intelligence, why empathy without accountability isn't kindness, and a competition to win a copy of the book, signed and posted by Gerry himself.Question: Sarah names five 'signals' of relational intelligence in the book. Name one.
Email support@thisishcd.com with your answer before August 31st to be in with a chance of winning. Winners will be announced via our newsletter. To join, go to thisishcd.com

________________________
BRING THIS IS HCD INTO YOUR ORGANISATION
→ Train my organisation https://www.thisishcd.com/training
→ Video Courses https://www.thisishcd.com/courses
→ Coaching Community (Coaching, Courses, WhatsApp) https://www.thisishcd.com/members
→ Gerry's consultancy (Service Design and Design Research) https://humana.design/
________________________
BECOME A DIRECTORY MEMBER (IT'S FREE!) and get all of this
→ FREE Introduction to Journey Management course with Marc Stickdorn & Gerry Scullion (Sign up for free with an email)
https://www.thisishcd.com/dashboard/learning/introduction-to-journey-management
→ Discover & Connect with others https://www.thisishcd.com/directory
→ Claim partner discounts https://www.thisishcd.com/partners
Gerry wears clothes from Sutsu, and has a coupon code for them, as well as Smaply, Scenario Cards, Unit 1 and more...
________________________
All episodes have been produced by This is Podcasting.

Service Design Disrupted Conference, Barcelona, October 15, 16 2026.
We offer 10% off all SD Disrupted conference tickets in our 'Partners' section. Join to access. → https://www.thisishcd.com/signup
________________________

In this episode of This is HCD, guest host Hyun Song kicks off her special series on inclusive design and accessibility, in conversation with Jamaal Digital Davis, a senior inclusive designer at Yahoo and founder of Inclusive Tech Club.Jamaal's core idea is simple: compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. In this episode, we talk about what inclusive storytelling really means, how to tell stories that don't flatten people into stereotypes, and what changes, for better and worse, when generative AI becomes part of how those stories get made.
Jamaal is also a filmmaker. His short film BEADS, a four-minute Afrofuturist drama made with generative AI, is the phoenix project he describes in the episode. You can watch the 60-second teaser and see the visuals at beadsfilm.com, and enter your email there to get a link to the full film
Connect with Jamaal
Website: https://jamaal.digital/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamaal-davis
Newsletter (subscribe on LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7243645845663793152
Short film BEADS: https://beadsfilm.com/ 

________________________
BRING THIS IS HCD INTO YOUR ORGANISATION
→ Train my organisation https://www.thisishcd.com/training
→ Video Courses https://www.thisishcd.com/courses
→ Coaching Community (Coaching, Courses, WhatsApp) https://www.thisishcd.com/members
→ Gerry's consultancy (Service Design and Design Research) https://humana.design/
________________________
BECOME A DIRECTORY MEMBER (IT'S FREE!) and get all of this
→ FREE Introduction to Journey Management course with Marc Stickdorn & Gerry Scullion (Sign up for free with an email)
https://www.thisishcd.com/dashboard/learning/introduction-to-journey-management
→ Discover & Connect with others https://www.thisishcd.com/directory
→ Claim partner discounts https://www.thisishcd.com/partners
Gerry wears clothes from Sutsu, and has a coupon code for them, as well as Smaply, Scenario Cards, Unit 1 and more...
________________________
All episodes have been produced by This is Podcasting.