Public organisations need to rethink the ways they innovate and improve their services. Service design has become a means to achieve innovation capabilities through service design projects with the purpose of both enhancing innovation capabilities, and creating new service. Based on observations, interviews and project documentations this exploratory paper reflects on the role and articulation of design expertise, how and if it may be transferred through design projects. Further, the relation between learning by doing and learning through expert examples is discussed through a pragmatist lens.