Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service of an organisation.
Unfortunately, many organizations are still not very clear about the difference between UX Design and Service Design, and they are not clear, how important it is for them to understand the difference between these two areas of design. In which, one talks about the user-specific experience which often refers to the design of digital products like websites and application design. And the Service Design talk about the experience design of the entire organizations service and the echo system around.
I am an UX Designer & Service Designer for over 20 years and I think, I can give some insight on the subject through this article hence organizations can understand how important these two design areas are, and restructure their user experience design and service experience, design team, strategy & practice better.
Many of us know UX research and design is a discipline in which designers and stakeholders are trying to understand and prioritize the end-user needs and wants through various user experience process & methods. Designers should empathize & understand user needs and wants and add the business requirement of the organization and design products and services which are desirable, feasible, viable etc. It is also important that the designers must and always try to make sure the end-user loves to use the product and make them come back again and again to the system.
When we talk about Service Design, the entire environment changes from a small canvas to a larger one. In which designers need to take care not just end-users but the entire business and its surroundings. All companies want their services to be efficient and should provide a great experience to the people who engage with their service every day. If they ensure that services are delivered better than all its competitors then, it can make a big difference to their business and organizations. It also generally addresses four distinct elements, which are; customer needs and wants, service organizations strategic intention, the benefits customers will receive and the description of how the service should be delivered. It defines “how and what of a service. And it should align between customers, stakeholder and service providers equally. The underlying mental model still focuses only on making things people want to possess and own.
As mentioned Service Design is broader & wider. It is not just designing the experience of the products, but also design the business process and infrastructure which deliver those customer experiences and beyond. It also covers both broad and strategic, as well as exact and tactical. It is also a mass way of problem-solving design activity. And all the Service Design outcomes are also needed to be feasible to produce, scalable and financially viable.
There are many stages to identify and design the entire service experience and the main Service Design touch points are; settings, actors, props and scripts. It covers a lot of UX research, ethnography, discussion sessions, workshops, role-based personas, service safari which provides a quick feel for what a user experiencing things in real life, empathy maps, service blueprints which cover the front stage and backstage activities, a business model canvas which gives business value insights, value proposition canvas which provide gain and pains (functional, social and emotional), service design process maps, user journey maps, service blueprints which covers the front stage and back stage activities, ecosystem maps which cover all the support and external players, business objectives and context maps, prototyping with definition and orchestration methods using business origami (should include tangible and intangible), customer lifecycle maps and a service design measurement which mainly covers heart metrics to understand what we achieved. These all provide details and data which can fuel the design.
How to prepare your organization?
To start a service design capability, you can scout for internal skills/teams by recruiting/restructuring or build it from scratch. You should start hiring service designers if you don’t have any service designers or designers in your organization. You can also hire an external agency if you want. But recruiting internally with external experts (hiring and training) will be ideal if you wish to have a long-term plan and vision. It is also very important to know the process, strategy, the respective role and their duties are essential, because that will be the deciding path for your Service Design success. Only that can bring the transition in your organization from UX designing over to Service Design.
Ideally, you also should include the non-design team with the Service Design team. They can bring organizations, other perspectives such as thoughts and ideas to the system. As you know Service Design is a whole organization design creation and it covers the entire organization and so many dependencies needed to the system, which not only include design, technology but all business, operational, administration, finance, customer support, other ecosystems etc. It is all about bringing together so much intelligence scattered throughout the organization around it into one place. Which means, organization really need a cross-functional team to get the job done. It is also about changing the culture of the organization and it also involves evangelizing all the top decision-makers, bringing investment, dedicated team leader etc. The entire organization must collaborate to execute service design successfully. Unity and congruency should come together both internally and from a cultural perspective and the team as well.
When you think about Service Design you should think to execute the front stage and backstage equally, so the entire organization’s teamwork is essential. That means not just the end-user or customer but also the employees, each part of the infrastructure also will be part of this entire system. Keeping the alignment in the omni channel and cross-channel sense is really critical because it is all about the touch points we go through. It is also about the supply chain that includes third-party tools, services & supports. It is very important that from the CEO to a simple office boy is involved in the culture of service excellence and should be part of this overall Service Design journey. An excellent team collaboration is so critical in Service Design and it really requires everybody getting onboard.
It is also very important that you should put business objectives first. Which means to develop a really good and strong service design, it is very important to have a solid strategy internally such as the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas should be unveiled early in the process. And we should bring all product owners and the rest of the team together and fill it and connect those together because, it is really by doing the collaboration spirit going to yield the better result, when it comes to implementation execution.
You should make sure to sync your service teams if there are multiple service designers scattered across organization, working independently in different silos can lead to issues. And also, make sure designers have the same vision and principle, the same ecosystem view to yield the best result. Finally, you make sure to use your team in the user research, it is nice to have good attendance to those service safaris and the ethnography. Make sure you record the video, take photos of all the activity and share those with stakeholders as well as for people who missed sessions. You should also make sure, your workshops are really going to be a place where all the members can socialize and debate a lot on all the points, data and make sure that you have proper sessions where you can go through all the photos, videos, the findings, personas, journey maps etc.
It also means that you should be able to monitor each point in a later stage to find out how things are working and how efficient the entire system is. To achieve this; designers, tech, marketing and related team should build a proper data-driven dashboard which will be the guiding point henceforth for the entire effort. So, heart metrics is essential which includes happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, task success etc.
As a conclusion, I would like to highlight a couple of points which are essential for all companies, who are keen to focus on their design capabilities for a better, service driven and futuristic company ahead. All companies should acknowledge that UX Design and Service Design are not the same. It has some similarities or rather some of the base things are same, but when it comes to Service Design for an organization’s service efficiency should be the focal point. And should have a holistic view and approach towards it. Or else the organizations will be way behind their local and international competitors. To achieve that, organizations should prepare and build a smart Service Design team with the best possible manner so that they can build a better design, service driven & futuristic organization for the next century. So, act now without any delay, else competitors will move ahead over you.
Thank you!
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