Service design performs value
Summary
Service performance is never neutral: it encodes ideas about value, power, and whose knowledge counts. Drawing on 25+ years designing business models across equity research, venture capital, product & experience design, development finance, and impact investing, Jen van der Meer examines patterns of service performance operating globally, from platform models optimizing for capital accumulation to government programs measuring institutional delivery to community-led financing ecosystems centering self-determination and sustainable transitions. This talk argues that systemic challenges are produced by the finance and business models we currently use. As AI reshapes service delivery at a geological scale, the question becomes even more urgent: whose theory of value gets encoded in technical systems? Addressing systemic challenges requires not better services within existing frameworks, but understanding business models as designed systems that encode power, determine what services can exist and for whom, and shape whose performance matters. Knowing how business models encode theories of value reveals both the constraints you’re operating within and the choices that remain avoidable, possible, plausible, and preferable.
Key Insights
-
•
Finance is a performative system staging worldviews, not purely objective or rational.
-
•
Business model metrics like lifetime value and customer acquisition cost strongly shape service design decisions.
-
•
Venture capital accepts early losses (J curves) betting on exponential growth, which sets performance expectations for startups.
-
•
AI scribing in healthcare shifts performance from care delivery to cash flow acceleration and operational efficiency.
-
•
Community-led health interventions, like Raven Indigenous outcomes, co-create success metrics blending clinical and culturally relevant indicators.
-
•
Service design often arrives after financial arrangements are fixed, limiting scope to fix systems rather than reimagine performance.
-
•
Designers must be proactive, not waiting for briefs, but initiating engagement to influence system-level performance.
-
•
Understanding financial context enables service designers to position their work strategically within organizations.
-
•
Scaling community-centered outcome contracts requires democratic governance and blended finance portfolios.
-
•
All models and metrics are temporary scripts; performance is an ongoing rehearsal where value is continuously redefined.
Notable Quotes
"Finance is not just a system; finance is a performance."
"Every spreadsheet is emotional. It’s a stage direction."
"Service design performs the belief, finance performs the control."
"Don’t wait for the brief. Go out there and make some waves."
"Investors front load the cost they expect to win at all costs."
"In Indigenous outcomes, payments are released only when medical and community metrics are met and validated."
"We cannot just sit around and map systems. We can design where performance arrangements are made."
"Venture investors accept a J curve of losses by design if they expect exponential growth."
"The challenge and opportunity is to expand what performance can mean."
"All of our models and metrics are temporary scripts. What matters is the rehearsal and how we keep rewriting the score together."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Design schools are often governed by non-designers and are surprisingly conservative, slow to change, and sometimes exploit precarious gig workers."
Nathan Shedroff Hugh Dubberly Thomas J. McLeishHow Will Design be Taught When the Schools Shut Down?
May 8, 2026
"Data is supposed to be neutral. It’s the way one uses it that can bring good or bad outcomes."
John Paul de Guzman10k Screens Later: How We Became a Data-Driven Design Organization
September 24, 2024
"It's almost impossible to do a survey without using some kind of tool nowadays."
Aleksandra Korczynska Caroline Jarrett Justyna ParmeeSurvey Tools
March 12, 2026
"We need to define success in ways that make our work meaningful and purposeful."
Kristin SkinnerTheme 2: Introduction and Provocation
January 8, 2024
"Design by means letting the people we serve lead the process and ourselves to drop our egos and let go."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Victor Udoewa Jennifer StricklandEverything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations
May 17, 2022
"Agile as trauma is a useful essay to understand how agile can harm design practices."
Uday GajendarThe Rise of Meta-Design: A Starter Playbook
May 19, 2022
"We approached feedback loops like a system equal parts structure and skill. They have to reinforce one another."
Vanessa VarinFeedback: The Other F-Word
September 10, 2025
"Digital twins are replicas of dynamic systems that help both individuals and populations manage and improve operations."
Hugh DubberlyProblems with Problems: Reconsidering the Frame of Designing as Problem-Solving
June 19, 2019
"When done well, convergence means research isn’t a department, it’s a shared system of knowledge or a collective understanding that aligns teams."
Sean McKayCoexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
March 11, 2025
