What is Service Design?
What is Service Design? This is a common question that pops up every time somebody asks me what I’m studying.
When I say I’m a Service Designer usually people look at me with a clueless face, trying to figure out what I’m talking about, and the one that asks me what it is, generally ends up understanding something else!
The thing is, that is not easy to explain what Service Design is, not even for a Service Designer, but not because it is a very complex discipline, on the contrary, it is hard to explain because it is quite straight forward and people don’t seem to believe it.
Since I started getting in to this “Service Design world” I’ve been searching for a good definition that helps me explain what it is for me. Some definition say that is “an activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service, in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service providers and customers”
But how can somebody remember all those words to explain something that should be a lot easier?
Another definition, from Frontier Service Design, states that “Service design is a holistic way for a business to gain a comprehensive, empathic understanding of customer needs”, but I found this definition a little too formal with many “big words”.
One definition that is really simple is the coffee shop example that says “When you have two coffee shops next to each other that sell the same product at the same price, service design is the reason why you walk into one and not the other”. And then I read from a design blog a more complete version of this definition: “The coffee shop example is getting closer, but is more an example of marketing and advertising. A better version would be: “When you have two coffee shops right next to each other, selling the exact same coffee at the exact same price; Service Design is what makes you enjoy one so much that you’ll become a regular customer and recommend it to your friends and family.”
So… What a Service Designer do? We Design Services, as simple as that!
We design and “re-see” from an holistic way, so that businesses gain a more comprehensive and empathic understanding of what their customer needs, so they develop a more user-friendly, competitive and relevant Service.
