Beyond the Map 2025: Towards a journey-driven world
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Ten years ago, Service Design Days set out to do something radical: Bring people together around the shared belief that design can make a difference in business, society, and the world.
Fueled by that same spirit of optimism, curiosity, and purpose (yet grounded in the realities of our increasingly complex global landscape), an international community of designers, strategists, and business leaders converged in Barcelona in October for the next iteration (and evolution) of SDD: Beyond the Map 2025, the first-ever journey management conference.
From the ordinary to the extraordinary, Beyond the Map offered a broader, cross-disciplinary exploration of the pressing challenges organizations face today. It also served as a creative think tank for finding meaningful solutions through journey management.
Attendees engaged with five core themes across keynotes, case studies, and hands-on workshops, while experiencing firsthand the power of human connection and shared intent. Here’s a look at some of the most resonant highlights, takeaways, and reflections, by theme.
Design leadership
Less control, more alignment.
The paradigm of design leadership is shifting from having “the answers” to creating the conditions where better ones can emerge.
In her workshop “Orchestrating Ecosystems at Scale,” Natalia Argüello, Head of Service Design at Zurich Insurance, described empathy as “strategy” and emphasized the importance of building trust and enabling collaboration.
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In the Rabobank case study “Designing Expertise at Scale,” Sander Viegers, Natalia Marmolejo, and Manjari Sahu showed that design maturity is a mindset more than a milestone, built through listening, co-creation, and celebrating small wins.
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That same spirit of empowerment echoed in Aki Sirawongprasert’s talk on scaling journey management at Lloyds Banking Group, where she urged leaders to “stop persuading and start empowering.”
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Birgit Geiberger of IKEA grounded it all in humanity, calling leadership “a privilege that demands purpose, humility, and empathy.”
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Futures & foresight
Design for possibility, not prediction
In an uncertain, rapidly changing world, the future isn’t something we can predict or control. Our work — and its impact — reverberates far beyond business as usual, shaping systems, societies, and everyday lives. “Today’s capabilities in service design are already irreducibly political,” said Lucy Kimbell, Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Central Saint Martins, reminding us that design is inseparable from the systems of power and change it touches.
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Mushon Zer-Aviv’s “Future Screenshots” took that idea further, pushing foresight into activism and inviting participants to imagine futures to prefer (or prevent), and to see design as a form of collective agency. “Resilience begins with imagination,” he said.
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In “Measuring the Unknown,” Sarah Auslander of Payoneer and Roee Bigger of Bezalel Academy showed how speculative design and GenAI can “turn fuzzy future outcomes into measurable signals,” reframing ambiguity as actionable insight.
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Søren Lethin and Carol Tang from the LEGO Group brought foresight to life in their playful, hands-on workshop. “We use futures to stay playful, not predictable,” they explained, positioning curiosity as a competitive advantage.
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And that spirit of optimism continued in the “Futures Literacy Lab” led by Maya Van Leemput, where participants unpacked the assumptions shaping their anticipatory thinking. “Foresight helps us stay curious,” one attendee reflected. “It’s not about being right. It’s about staying ready.”
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Technology & AI
Designing with intelligence and conscience
The AI track carried a different kind of urgency. In “From Shaping AI Products to Redefining Design Itself,” Enrique Rodríguez Carrero from BBVA showed how design now co-leads decisions on data ethics, governance, and culture. “We’re designing AI,” Barrera said, “but AI is also redesigning us.”
In “Reverse Engineering the Human Engagement Risks™ of AI,” Ovetta Sampson, Founder of Right AI, delivered one of the conference’s most talked-about sessions. Participants dissected familiar projects through an ethical lens, learning to identify bias before it reaches production. “Frameworks aren’t enough,” Sampson reminded the room. “We need design rituals that protect human agency.”
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That interplay between automation and awareness ran through the session with Colette Forma, Stella van den Berg, and Geert Christiaansen on AI-supported strategy and resurfaced in hallway conversations about responsible adoption. As another attendee reflected, “We have a shared responsibility to drive progress with awareness, to protect the fragility that makes us human.”
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Experience & empathy
Emotion is the next metric
Empathy is becoming measurable. That was the message behind the riveting keynote on day two, delivered by Lauren Pleydell-Pearce, Roger Gagnon, and Christy Ho of PwC. Their talk, “Decoding the Feeling Economy,” shared highlights from a research study that translated insights from 3,400 customer stories into emotional signals leaders can design for. “When customers feel more, they do more,” Christy emphasized.
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Grace de Athayde of Pfizer described Journey Ops as a “vibrant town square” where data, design, and operations meet. Her call to “prioritize progress over perfection” captured the spirit of a discipline in motion.
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From B2B to enterprise scale, Gitta Mors of KPN and Lucy Stuyfzand of Essense showed how to “start with one great journey” and use it as proof of concept to drive adoption and cultural change. Their “From One Great Dish to a World-Class Experience” talk proved that excellence scales from focus, not size.
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Meanwhile, Paulien Kreutzer and Qin Han from Stby led “Making Customer Journey Research Last,” showing how journeys can evolve into living knowledge systems. Participants explored ways to document and analyze journeys so they keep giving back over time, bridging empathy with evidence.
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As one attendee said, “Journey management is all about shifting from a feature-focused backlog to an insight-driven culture.”
Evidence & insight
Measure what matters
Data found its soul in Zurich Insurance’s “From ‘So What?’ to ‘Now What?’” workshop led by Martina Francella, Itziar Pobes, and Fiamma Degl’Innocenti. Participants practiced minimalist mapping, linking journeys to existing KPIs, and left with a mission: Deliver a quick win leaders can’t ignore.
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Journeys & ecosystems
Building the discipline
If every theme at Beyond the Map connected one piece of the puzzle, Journeys & Ecosystems brought the picture into focus. Across sessions, journeys emerged as the organizing principle for alignment, linking data, decisions, and delivery into one shared system of action.
The Harmonic Design trio of Patrick Quattlebaum, Shreya Dhawan, and Mariah Mills led a dynamic workshop on embedding journey management into daily systems and relationships. “It’s about turning ambition into action,” said one participant, summing up the spirit of the session.
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“Charting a Course to Strategic Alignment” showed how immersive journey exhibits can turn insight into action. Dan Sullivan and Brian Reed demonstrated how CHG Healthcare used them to unite departments around shared outcomes, proving that alignment can be designed. “Probably one of the best talks of the conference,” said another attendee.“It showed how to prove value and get executive buy-in.”
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Daniel Hoffmann and Melanie Völkle from Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar revealed how millions of touchpoints can become a unified, insight-driven journey: a dual track of exploitation and exploration that keeps innovation grounded in real passenger experience.
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One of the most comprehensive sessions of the conference, “Mastering Journey Management: A Quick Start Guide,” offered a fast-track introduction to the discipline — from why it matters to how to make it work in practice. Moderated by Marc Fonteijn, it featured Jens Scharnetzki, Head of Customer Experience at EnBW; Aude Jacquemin, Head of Customer Experience at Lyreco; Florian Vollmer, Experience Insights and Journey Management Lead at Autodesk; and Memie Huang, Head of Customer Success at TheyDo.
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Together, they explored what it really takes to embed journey management across organizations, from connecting journeys to business outcomes to building momentum through shared language and community. As Jacquemin noted, “Collaboration rituals between CX, Product, and Operations are the real engine of transformation.”
Attendees described it as a “reality check” session, moving beyond theory into tangible, replicable practices. One participant summed it up: “Journey management is best sold by not mentioning journey management. Just solve problems and bring value any way you can.” The takeaway: start small, stay aligned, and scale what works.
Closing the loop, Mark Smith, founder of the Institute for Journey Management, summed up this theme when he said, “We’ve spent years building maps. Now it’s time to build the discipline that connects them.”
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And Patrick Quattlebaum of Harmonic Design delivered the first day’s closing keynote on what mature journey management looks like in practice. He urged leaders to bridge the gap between operational efficiency and customer impact with a message that resonated across the conference: Don’t sell the method, model the mindset.
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A community becoming a movement
Threaded through every talk and workshop, journey management shone as the organizing system of customer-centric enterprises and the gravitational center of a growing movement. As one attendee put it, it’s all about “momentum through community.”
Designers, strategists, doers, and dreamers across disciplines shared deep conversations and insights as well as laughter, drinks, and tapas. “It felt like group therapy for journey-management folks,” joked Khayyam Lasi, Senior Service Designer at Autodesk.
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That light-hearted self-reflection was encapsulated in the closing keynote “What Service Design Is (Not) and Can (Not) Do,” by Jasper van Kuijk of Karlstad University. With sharp wit and disarming candor, Van Kuijk challenged the audience to confront the limits of short-termism and remember that real impact takes time. "Filled with critical statements on the state of Service Design and delivered with humor and provocation, (It was) the cherry on the top to end this conference!” reflected one attendee.
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As the conference came to a close, participants left feeling inspired, connected, and convinced that journey management has found its home: “Maps can shape what we see, but it’s in going beyond them that we truly thrive.”
Here’s to the community that made it real — and to the next chapter, when we meet again for Beyond the Map 2026 in London.
Relive the moments, faces, and conversations that made it special — see the full photo gallery from Beyond the Map 2025 here.