Page 135 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

3. (Re)Negotiating Service Design 123
are the main authority and the presence of others, like clients or Accen- ture consultants, is minimized. In the project we followed this was for example achieved through working in their own design studio in Madrid, while their clients were based in their own offices in the Netherlands. Only when it was needed, for example during presentations of design outcomes or during user interviews, the designers worked from the client’s offices. In interviews, the designers said that working in a private space releases them from the pressure to perform and show the best version of themselves. In a way, then, a private working space released the designers from the feeling that there are ‘onlookers’ (Sergeeva et al. 2017):
“We need time to work alone and that does not work if he [client] is breathing down our neck. Imagine that clients of a chef constantly look when he cooks”.
At the same time, “working alone” gave them the comfort to do as they please. Designers mentioned “we need the space to be creative and to learn”, “we need to be able to ask stupid questions in an unlimited way” and “we need time for team building and jokes”. For clients, however, the phys- ical seclusion of designers was not ideal. On various occasions, clients said that they were used to work alongside externally-hired consultants and this gave them a sense of “control” over what was happening in the project. Without the possibility to see the work of designers, the clients sensed the design process was a “black box” and there was little transparency around what designers do. A client said:
“[I had the feeling] that we could review and watch along, but for the [cli- ents] team it definitely did not feel that we were building [heightened voice] together! If I look at the [co-creation] sessions, we had four sessions, while we are used to almost have daily sessions and co-creations when we work with external parties. And then, the distance [between clients and design- ers] also does not help. We only have four fixed moments, and then they fly to the Netherlands”.
So far, our observations suggest that there exists a tension between, one the one hand, the need of clients to share the workspace, and on the other hand, the need of designers to work in a separate and creative envi- ronment. This tension, interestingly, was also a point of conflict among the designers themselves.
During our fieldwork, we repeatedly witnessed moments in which designers had discussions about ‘how to accommodate their workspace’. One