Fields of Service Design 1

Service design thinking is an interdisciplinary arena that connects various fields of activities to fulfill the desired outcome. There are many fields that their expertise is needed for this creative process. Here we will mention some of them according to the reference book This is Service Design Thinking.

Product Design also known as Industrial Design: Designers role changed dramatically in last decades. Now a product designer is also part of the research group and the process designing team. To design an object only the material, form and function is not important but also the interaction between people with the object, the technology involved, the way the product will be delivered and also the functionality of the product all need to be considered. The Industrial Design Society of America defines industrial design as “a professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of product and system for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer (IDSA, 2010)

Graphic Design: Jakob Schneider says “It is nearly impossible for any product or service to be available on the market without a graphically designed element.” These elements can be the packaging, branding, manuals or pictograms. The graphic designers as visual individuals are responsible mostly for branding and information design. Branding refers to create a visual identity for goods and services that are meaningful and familiar for the customers. Information design, in the other hand, is making a simple way to understand complex concepts. Graphic designers are important for a great successful service design process to create comfortably usable forms, developing pictograms, designing information graphics, branding, and providing many other creative supports.

Interaction Design: Interactive design a young field but it is becoming more important everyday. It is an important part of service design because it is basically about the interaction between customer and the service. Some of the important points to consider when designing an interface design are Desirability, Utility, Usability, and Pleasurability. A good service needs to gain customer’s trust, be functional and work well, be easy to use and gives customer good feeling. Interaction design can keep the current customers satisfied and gain new customers.

Social Design: The design process which is addressing a social issue or on concerns that can change human lives is known as social design. Social design is a way of thinking about what, why and how designing a concept, a product, or a service can change the needs of the society.

To be continued…

This is Service Design Thinking

Service Design Process

Designing a service doesn’t have a set in stone procedure and different service designers have their own methods. Also labeling the steps of the process is different but overall the mindset is the same for them all. One can label the process as Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver and another can call it Research, Brainstorm, Prototype, Repeat, and Deliver. This is Service Design Thinking by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider introduces these steps as Exploration, Creation, Reflection, and Implementation.

The First step, which is called Exploration, requires a lot of research. First the designers need to understand the vision and goal of the company providing the service. Getting familiar with the organizational structure and the way the service is being delivered is very important in terms of understanding the real issue. This leads to the second step in exploration, which is identifying the real problem. Designers should gain a clear understanding of the problem from the customer’s point of view. To finish this first step, designers should visualize all findings and also the underlying structure of the previous service.

The second step is Creation, which has a very close relationship with the third step Reflection. In these two steps the basic idea is to select a concept, design the service, and test it. This process is an ongoing process until all mistakes been caught. This procedure might take awhile until troubleshooting and continues testing results a flawless product. As the book says “one of the main features of service design thinking is that this approach is not about avoiding mistakes, but rather to explore as many as possible mistakes.” Making mistakes early in the process will help the designers to solve the issues before implementation.

The final step is the Implementation, which requires change management. In this step planning change, implementing change, and reviewing change as the fundamentals of the change management should be considered.  In this process beside customers that the whole service is designed around them, employees play an important role as the service deliverers. In ideal situation, employees should be involved from the beginning of the design process therefore because of their involvement they would be familiar with the concept and the process. There will be always unconsidered situations and problems and solving the issues as they occur quickly and creatively is required for a smooth transition to implementation of a new service.

About the picture: Service Designers’ best friend is the sticky-notes! They are simple and quick tools to visualize the process, show the relations and add new information during the co-creative process. It is easy to add a step or remove it when everything is visualized by sticky-notes.

This is Service Design Thinking

5 principles of Service Design

User-Centered: Service design is user-centered and it has to be viewed from the customer’s point of view. Services are created through interaction between customer and the provider therefore; customers play a great role in the process of creating service design. To create a user-centered service customers should be understood and this is only possible through learning and understanding their habits, culture, and social context. Sometimes the best way to get real insights and to understand how customers feel, designers should walk in customers shoes. This is the only way they can really understand the concerns customers have and problems they are facing. So learning about customers will help designers to provide a service, which is designed by using a common language. A common language is a language everyone can understand. It doesn’t have technical words and expressions and it is purely based on customers understanding.

Co-Creative: Service design has to be co-creative which means to include all stakeholders in the process of design. Although in designing a service customers are one of the most important aspects, other stakeholders such as providers and employer are important as well. Therefore, in designing an ideal service experience everyone should be involved to explore and define the service proposition. This is co-creation and facilitating this group of people who are essential for the success of the business is an important part of design thinking and creativity. Everyone can be creative but the art of listening to all and put all ideas together and get to a practical idea, is what a service designer does.

Sequencing: All services should be visualized as a sequence of interrelated actions. Services are dynamic processes and they occur in a certain phases in time. This period of time needs to be not very long to make the customer bored and not very short to make customer stressed. To get to a great service experience, the service should be tested several times and the impacts on customers should be recorded.  

Evidencing: Intangible services should be visualized in term of physical artifacts. The intangible services are invisible and customers don’t even notice them in many occasions. To make them notice the service and remember it, a good service will provide some artifacts for customers. Evidencing can be provided in different ways according to the need in the particular situation. Some of these methods are by using bills, mail, signs, and souvenirs.

Holistic: The entire environment of a service should be considered. The environment where the service is taking place is very important and has to be considered. Overall every aspect of the service needs to be considered such as some alternatives in customer’s journey and the organization of the service provider. 

This is Service Design Thinking.

What is Service Design?

Everyday millions of people are using services provided by different businesses. Some of these services are intangible such as banking, education, transportation, and consulting and some services are related to direct ownership transfer of goods such as grocery stores, retail stores, and car dealers. In every business, despite of the kind of product and/or service provided, customer service plays a very important role. Customer satisfaction is very important factor in growth of a business and determines its future. Therefore, it is important to understand what are the elements, which provides pleasant experience for customers. This good experience will be the reason for them to remember the business, recommend it to others, and eventually make them revisit. Here is where Service design comes in.

Service design is a young field, which is basically the knowledge behind providing a great experience to customer while using any kind of service. Service Design is a mixture of science and design; psychology, statistics, graphic design and many more specialties are demanded to create an innovative and unique experience that makes sense for customers. In other word, analytics from science and creativity of design is both required to get to practicality. Service Design is not only beneficial for the customers but also has great impact on the profitability of the business.  A successful services design meets the needs of the customers and a good experience will make the customers to return to the same brand or place. Also, with providing solutions, service design will increase the profitability of the brand and redefine the brand reputation with providing usable efficient and also desirable experience.

Here is a short interview with Birgit Mager President for Service Design Network. She is explaining the basics of service design.

http://www.service-design-network.org/intro/

http://www.servicesciencefactory.com/