What is Service Design?
Service Design
continues to grow as priorities around human-centered design take center stage.
However, many organizations struggle to understand—what is service design?
While many principals
of Service Design also apply to other HCD methods including Experience Design,
Design Thinking, UX, etc. there are uniquely specific proponents within service
design that are exclusive to the practice.
Another point of
interest includes the varying definitions around Service Design emergent due to
the specific needs of certain organizations, industries, and departments. There
certainly is no “one size fits all” approach, instead a nuanced and specific refinement
of the common principals is often the recipe for success.
The most simplistic
version of Service Design I like to use is simply:
Service Design is the Human-Centered Design
of Services
But let’s take a
deeper dive.
Service design
starts with the goal of increasing satisfaction in quality & efficiencies
between services and customers utilizing the organization of people,
infrastructure, data, operations, and experiences to do so.
While there are
many moving parts, the overall idea highlights the holistic nature of Service
Design as a practice. Service Design is not focused on a singular touchpoint,
channel, or experience, instead looks at all moving pieces involved in
excellent service delivery as essential components in the design improvements.
One major principal
to the above that all service designers emphasize is: Front Stage & Back Stage Players
Front Stage Players are the customer facing touchpoints
involved in service delivery. Think of your experience at a bank. These front
stage players include the interaction on the mobile app, your website, when you
walk into the retail locations, the employees you interact with, perhaps even a
billboard or subway ad. These are the experiences of service your customers
interact and see.
Back Stage Players are the components of your service that are
integral in the execution of a great experience, but your customer may not
necessarily interact directly with. This for instance could be your internal
processes, the data infrastructure, the training & employee experience,
etc. This is typically the most complex piece of the equation.
Service Design
looks to improve the front-stage interactions however, acknowledges and
celebrates the immense complexity and necessity of the back stage optimization.
When taking this a
step further, we must also evaluate: What is a Service?
Traditionally one
will interact with Products or Tangible goods—think a pen, a water bottle, a
laptop—and Services—viewed as intangible and untouchable such as the medical treatment,
transportation, etc.
However, in today’s
experience economy, the distinction is no longer clear resulting in what many
view as the Product/Service Continuum. Companies do not sit soley in one
extreme or the other, but instead often have a mix of both product and service.
For instance, a
coffee shop has a product i.e. their coffee, but also provides a service of
delivering and serving your coffee. An insurance company, such as Progressive,
offers insurance coverage, but also may have a physical product that records
your driving habits to achieve better rates. A food company sells a food
product, but may also engage customers on community platforms that offer
recipes as an outside service.
*image credited to Nielsen Norman
Group
Overall, there are truly native principals
of Service Design that include:
Customer Centric—Service Design is intrinsically hyper
focused on the end customer or user
Holistic—the design viewpoint must be inclusive to all influences to the
desired end result
Evidence Driven—per the Design Thinking method, Service
Design includes many points of testing, reiterating, and prototyping services
to ensure they are built off user experience
Co-Creative—this may touch to the customer centricity, but more often refers to the backstage interactivity between departments
