Masha Safina, Service Design Director, Accenture Song

We interviewed ID alum Masha Safina (MDM 2013), Service Design Director at Accenture Song, via email. Masha discussed her transition from architecture to strategic design, her work across sectors from healthcare to public services, and the evolving role of service design in addressing complex societal challenges.

Previously, Masha served as Service Design Lead at Fjord (now part of Accenture Song), Director of Service Design and Strategy at INSITUM, and Senior Design Lead at Doblin.

What are you doing professionally today?

Today, I lead design teams as a Service Design Director at Accenture Song, where I work at the intersection of technology, business, and social impact, primarily with public sector clients. My role blends service design, systems thinking, and design research to help organizations reimagine how their services, experiences, and products work in the real world. A big part of my focus is making sure we design with people, not just for them.

In addition to my client work, I co-lead the Service Design Craft Community within Accenture Song’s Design and Digital Products team, where I help shape our practice, mentor designers, and cultivate a culture of experimentation and learning.

What’s your background, and how did you decide to come to ID?

I started out in architecture because I was fascinated by how spaces make people feel and how design can shape communities. Early in my career, I worked on big, complex public-interest projects, and that’s when I realized design’s power goes way beyond buildings, it can also shape the systems that support those spaces, especially when you’re working directly with communities facing tough challenges.

I was always more interested in how people actually use and experience a space from the inside out, rather than just focusing on the building’s form or style. Over time, I found myself wanting to design beyond the built environment, to shift from shaping structures to shaping experiences and systems that could adapt, evolve, and support broader human needs.

That curiosity led me to strategic design, which felt like a way to take on bigger societal and organizational challenges. The Institute of Design was the perfect place to grow that skill set. I loved its interdisciplinary approach and focus on tackling complex, messy problems. While I was there, I picked up a whole new set of tools: systems thinking, qualitative research, strategic foresight, that let me bridge my architectural roots with a much broader goal of creating impact at a systemic level.

What was your path from ID to where you are now? And what has surprised you on this path?

My path from ID to Accenture Song has been shaped by curiosity and a constant focus on putting people at the center. After graduating, I jumped into roles where I could use design strategy to tackle all kinds of challenges, from driving public sector innovation to working on health equity, digital transformation, and social impact. Each project was like stepping into a new world with its own language, priorities, and constraints.

These days at Accenture Song, most of my work is in the public sector—making it easier to apply for public benefits, rethinking employee experiences within government agencies, and designing services that are more inclusive and accessible for communities that have been overlooked for far too long.

Looking back, the best part has been realizing how design can act as a bridge, connecting institutions with the people they serve and making change that’s not just effective, but genuinely human.

How would you describe design today? Both at your organization and in the larger world?

For me, service design is really about starting with people—digging deep into what they need, what motivates them, and what gets in their way—and then turning those insights into actionable strategies. In our day-to-day work, that means a lot of design research, mixing both qualitative and quantitative methods to get past the obvious and uncover what really matters. From there, we combine that human understanding with knowledge of digital platforms and data, so the services we design are not just functional, but also relevant and personalized.

But the truth is, today’s challenges are rarely something designers can solve on their own. Service design has become more of a catalyst—it’s about sparking change in a messy, interconnected world where cross-disciplinary collaboration is essential. That often means not just coming up with new ideas, but enabling change—designing the right conditions, models and processes so those ideas can actually take root and make new ways of working possible.

And of course, AI is changing the game. It opens up incredible opportunities, but also puts a lot of responsibility on us as designers. We’re not just creating AI-driven experiences, we’re shaping the systems and rules behind them, making sure they’re ethical, human-centered, and not manipulative.

So, I’d say the role of service design today is expanding. It’s about improving experiences, yes, but also helping people navigate complexity, guiding ethical choices, and imagining more sustainable futures.

What is exciting you now in design, and what do you foresee happening next?

Lately, I’m really energized about how design is leaning further into actually making change happen, not just coming up with great ideas, but creating the frameworks, governance models, and ground rules that make those ideas stick. Increasingly, I see design stretching into the realm of policy design, and that’s where much of my current excitement lies. Spending time in the government space, I’ve seen firsthand how policies directly shape people’s experiences—whether that’s how citizens access benefits or how public servants do their jobs. I love the idea of designers teaming up with policymakers to show what those decisions mean for real people and to make sure policies are designed with the human experience in mind.

And of course, there’s AI, it’s changing everything. We’re moving from being the sole “creators” to orchestrators of AI tools, which means our job is to keep the work grounded in ethics and human needs. AI can help us move faster, but we have to make sure it’s moving us in the right direction. That’s why I think our role as advocates for connection, empathy, and community will matter more than ever. At the end of the day, it’s not just about designing for efficiency, it’s about designing for people.

What would you tell emerging designers about how to position themselves for tomorrow?

One of the biggest things that will set you up for success is learning how to really partner with people—not just other designers, but folks from all kinds of backgrounds and disciplines. As human-centered designers, we’ve got this superpower of listening deeply. We can get to the heart of what our partners and clients care about, what drives them, and what keeps them up at night. That kind of understanding builds trust, gets you invited into bigger conversations, and makes collaboration so much smoother.

The other thing—get comfortable with feedback. I know, everyone says “you’re not your work,” but it’s still tough to separate yourself from something you’ve poured your heart into. The sooner you can see feedback as a tool for growth instead of a personal critique, the faster you’ll level up. Ask for it often, take it seriously, and use it to make your work, and yourself, better.

What have been some of your biggest lessons and proudest moments?

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is to have patience. In service design, especially when you’re working in the public sector, seeing an idea come to life takes time. You can’t rush the process, and you definitely can’t skip over the hard work of getting people aligned. Stakeholder engagement is really about building trust, and that doesn’t happen overnight.

Some of my proudest moments have been seeing an idea we came up in a workshop actually come to life in the real world. Watching people use something we designed, and knowing all the collaboration and persistence it took to get there, makes the long, sometimes slow process completely worth it.

What makes a good designer? If you hire, what do you look for?

To me, a good designer isn’t defined by how many frameworks they’ve mastered, it’s someone who knows how to think critically and make design-informed decisions. When I’m talking to candidates, I care less about whether they can name every method in the book and more about how they approached a problem.

I’ll usually ask them to walk me through a project: how they defined the problem, why they made the choices they did, and how they handled the twists and turns along the way. I’m looking for their thought process, their curiosity, and their flexibility, because things almost never go exactly as planned.

Design is messy. It’s not a straight line, and there’s no single “right way” to do it. The best designers are the ones who can navigate ambiguity with a balance of rigor, creativity, and empathy—always grounded in the needs of the people they’re designing for.

What’s an image or a moment that comes to mind when you think of ID?

When I think back to my time at ID, one project immediately comes to mind—a partnership with United Way of Southeastern Michigan, led by then-Dean Patrick Whitney. We were looking at how Early Learning Centers—community hubs offering classes and resources for underserved families—could support caregivers in understanding the importance of reading with their kids.

I remember spending days in Detroit, visiting these centers, sitting with mothers, listening to their stories, and learning what mattered most to them and what support they truly needed. I can still see their faces. The love, the resilience, the dreams they carried. That project really grounded me in what human-centered design is all about: starting with listening and letting people’s lived experiences guide the work.

What do you most value about your ID experience and why?

When I was at ID, I never imagined I’d one day be designing a post-pandemic return-to-school strategy, developing service experiences for veterans, or advising government agencies on human insight–driven strategic planning. Yet the framework for problem-solving I gained there has been the foundation for all of it—adaptable, iterative, and resilient across contexts.

ID also taught me what human-centered design really means—not just as a buzzword, but as a practical way to get results and drive change. That approach still guides how I help clients see the people behind the data and the stories behind the systems.

And then there’s the network. The people I met at and through ID aren’t just professional contacts—they’re friends who share my values and my outlook on the world.

You recently attended ID’s Sacred Valley immersion in Peru. How did learning from Andean principles of value creation shift your thinking as a designer?

Spending time in the Sacred Valley and immersing myself in a culture rooted in centuries of ancestral knowledge was truly transformative. It made me realize how much our Western mindset, focused on scarcity, competition, and individual ownership, shapes the way we live and work.

By contrast, Indigenous culture is all about reciprocity and creating value together as a community. Collaboration, sharing, and making sure everyone benefits are at the center, and there’s a big focus on emotional value too—exchange of care, support, and human connection.

Being there made me think a lot about the balance between designing for efficiency vs human touch. How can we address that tension? How do we make technology like AI work in ethical, humane ways? How do we empower local communities to create value that’s fair, reciprocal, and sustainable? These are the kinds of questions that are going to guide how I approach design moving forward.

Learn more about ID’s Master of Science in Strategic Design Leadership (MS-SDL), formerly the MDM program.