A Waypoint: Do I still belong here?

Service design has never just been a set of methods. It’s a way of helping people make meaningful change together. As our tools become cheaper, our methods become commonplace, and our job titles become less certain, we’re forced to ask a more uncomfortable question: what part of our work was actually valuable all along? This session is about separating what you do from who you are, and making conscious choices about what you take into whatever comes next.

Many practitioners are asking questions they rarely say out loud. AI is only one of the forces exposing those questions. Product thinking, commercial pressure, shrinking teams and changing expectations are all reshaping our profession and making it harder to explain, and sell, the value of what we do. That is exactly why we need greater clarity about what our real contribution is. If we don’t consciously decide that for ourselves, there’s a good chance our organisations, our tools, or the market will decide for us.