Frank Spillers will move you from tactical to strategic service d

This is the second course I have taken with Frank via Maven. He is so passionate about the subjects he teaches! The focal topics of his courses are always bolstered by his wealth of experience and depth of knowledge! He is so well-read, often citing and sharing book titles and authors, has breadth and depth of experience frequently sharing anecdotes about projects he has been engaged in with relevant context (confidentiality always respected), and has nearly 30 years of activism experience for access and accessibility! During this course we reviewed the objectives and intended outcomes of visualizing not only the current story of the people we serve but also considered the historical biases and context those current stories have been built upon. We also looked forward through the lens of opportunity and desired future state, of course AI was brought into the discussion-- The throughline for this course was neurodiversity and we had the privilege of speaking with 3 guest subject matter experts (SMEs) who brought lived experience and activism. With their shares on top of the video interviews and provided briefs, we had a great deal of insight to bring to our 3 maps. One of the things I truly enjoy about synchronous, live courses like this is the opportunity to co-design with Frank and the diverse group of participants in the cohort! I always meet incredible people and learn from them as well as Frank!

Frank’s Service Design Intensive is an excellent course for anyone looking to strengthen their systems thinking and understand how customer experiences are shaped by the broader service ecosystem. The cohort balances practical methods with real-world application, and I particularly appreciated how each assignment built naturally toward the final capstone. One concept that had a lasting impact on me was the distinction between value demand and failure demand, which has given me a new lens for connecting customer research with operational improvement. Frank creates an engaging and supportive learning environment, encourages thoughtful discussion, and generously shares his experience. I highly recommend this course to UX professionals, researchers, product teams, and anyone looking to expand into service design and experience strategy. Thank you, Frank, for an engaging and inspiring learning experience.

I truly enjoyed the Service Design Intensive course with Frank Spillers. I've been following his career since I took his Service Design Course at IxDF, so when I saw this one, I didn't hesitate to take it. It was even better than expected! So well-structured that it's easy to follow the concepts and deepen your understanding with each class. It was also a great way to network and meet other service designers from around the world :)

This class shifted how I view the layers of a business and a customer experience. One of the biggest breakthroughs was learning about escape touchpoints and realizing that designing gracefully builds trust. Learning about zooming in and zooming out challenged me to think about how far you can go into the details and back out to the big-picture. This allows to balance tiny interactions with the entire ecosystem and not getting lost. Improv also taught me to prototype quickly and adapt when things don't go as planned, a skill great for work and for life. Together, these tools have refined how I approach problem-solving.

Two things were happening on this course at once. I was learning to map journeys, and I was on one. The skill I was learning to see in other people's services, I was building in myself. One of the most important skills I have realised I am learning on this course is the ability to zoom in and out. Specifically, moving between the fine detail of a single touchpoint and the wider view of the whole service. This is a distinct skill in its own right, not just a by-product of doing the work. From a cognitive point of view, this is about neuroplasticity. The brain forms and strengthens the connections it uses repeatedly, which means zooming in and out is not a fixed trait you either have or you don't. It is a skill that you can learn, and the more deliberately you practise moving between the levels, the more natural it becomes. The improv session made that concrete. Improv is zoom in and out with the safety off. You hold the whole scene in your head while you respond to the one thing in front of you. No time to think, no notes to hide behind. It was the most fun I had on the course, and it was also the clearest proof of the point. The skill is trainable, and you can feel it firing. Aristotle got there first. We become what we repeatedly do, and excellence is a habit built by repetition, not a single act. Two and a half thousand years later the neuroscience says the same thing in a different language. Repeated action lays the wiring. One claim, evidenced twice. What the course did well: it was live and interactive, it teaches through real failures rather than tidy success stories, and Frank teaches as a practitioner, not a theorist. You leave with things you can use every day.