What really is Service Design? 🤔

image credits : Unsplash

As a student and now a professional in service design within the banking sector, I often encounter the question, “What exactly do you do as a service designer?” This question has followed me throughout my education and continues to be relevant due to the dynamic nature of the field.

Service design is relatively new in the Indian context and is not as mainstream as other design disciplines, leading to a lack of awareness among the majority of the population. However, service design holds tremendous potential in today’s industry. Like many others, I had numerous questions about this new discipline: its exact definition, what it entails, the type of work I would be doing, and its future scope.

So, here is my explanation of ‘Service Design’, based on my experience studying and beginning to practice it in the industry.

A fitting analogy

Let’s take the case of watching a critically acclaimed movie (‘The Avengers’ for example). You’re on the edge of your seat, immersed in the heroes’ journey to defeat the villain. The film’s execution keeps you engrossed, leaving the theatre still dreaming about it. You declare it ‘the best movie ever’ and recommend it to others.

What made you label this film as the ‘best movie ever’? Was it the performances of the actors portraying the heroes? Or was it the vision of the director? Could it have been the producers who funded the project? Or the scriptwriter who crafted the story?

We often debate who was the one person that made a movie amazing. However, it’s not just one individual, but a team of people from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. This team collaborates to co-create the film that audiences enjoy. This includes actors, directors, producers, cameramen, editors, VFX artists, stunt coordinators, spot boys, lighting and equipment handlers, assistants, scriptwriters, musicians, production houses, and more. In short, every individual who contributes to the movie’s creation plays a part in its success……quite similar to the creation of service in the market!

Defining Service Design

Taking the movie analogy, service design can be defined as the ability to organise, plan and arrange not just people, but also infrastructure, equipment, communication in order to enhance or improve the quality of interaction between the service provider & the user.

In the case of the movie, the service providers would be the actors, producers, directors, etc. while the user is the movie audience, i.e. us.

Since we can only see what is on the big screen, we are what is referred to as the ‘front-end’, while the service providers, invisible to us are referred to as the ‘back-end’ of the service.

But the question is, how did this sync take place between individuals from such diverse backgrounds almost perfectly?

This is one of the primary goals of service design, to effectively plan the ‘back-end’ in such a way that delivers a problem-free and engaging experience for the ‘front-end’. This could be done by introducing techniques & processes that for eg. reduce operational costs, allow diverse groups to participate, and make these strategies operational.

An effective tool at the arsenal of a service designer is thus, service blueprinting.

What are service blueprints?

image credits : Nielsen Norman Group

Service blueprinting is a visual mapping tool used in service design to outline the entire service process. It helps identify inefficiencies, improve the customer experience, and streamline service delivery by providing a comprehensive view of the service ecosystem, enabling better understanding of service flows and fostering collaboration among different teams.

Businesses benefit from service blueprints by:

1. Enhancing the customer experience
2. Improving operational efficiency
3. Encouraging cross-departmental collaboration
4. Identifying innovation opportunities
5. Facilitating clearer strategy development

Service design is driven by a human centric approach

Thus it uses design thinking tools & methodologies to guide a large chunk of its process. The goal is on the customer experience & the quality of back-end service. This approach allows service design to focus on user needs & expectations better, & also quickly adapt to the evolving needs of their users.

Service design is holistic and focuses on systems

image credits : Imaginary cloud

Service design focuses on designing for the biggest picture. It encompasses both, the back-end & the front-end, thus taking into account every tangible & intangible asset associated with it. These assets are referred to as ‘stakeholders’ in service design terminology.

Thus a typical service design process would include mapping all the stakeholders associated with the service & then arranging or structuring them effectively in ways that improve customer-ended experiences in the service.

Service design has to be extremely inclusive by involving every stakeholder that is in contact, either directly or indirectly with the service system.

The scope of Service Design

With improved customer delight & satisfaction as the goal, along with creating cost effective business models, that automate and run sustainably with minimal intervention, a large chunk of the consumer industry focuses on using service design methodologies to improve their existing services or launch newer services.

Also, with ever-changing user needs, and the need to expand the user base for products and services, the industry focus will surely increase exponentially.

Furthermore, the use of service design in planning & policy making by governments & institutions can help create more inclusive spaces for individuals of different economic, social, geographical, ethnic & religious backgrounds. It can be a very important tool for universal design.

The service design idea of focusing on systems can be expanded into even larger contexts to solve larger global problems & address issues like habitat loss, climate change, global warming by including natural systems, animals, plants, and other living species as our important stakeholders. This approach can help pave the way towards sustainable & circular systems in the future.

That’s been it for this blog…

Do reach out & share your thoughts & suggestions! Would love the feedback.

Until then, stay tuned for the next one! 🤓