What is Service Design? Let's start with an example:
Think of the last time you went to the DMV- If your experience was like most people's
it was frustrating, took way too long, and you probably didn't leave feeling great.
While waiting, you may have wondered, "Why isn't this service more satisfying?"
and started imagining ways to improve your experience.
Service design is the practice of making services, just like the DMV, better
through research, developing ideas, and testing experiences.
Because you can't see them, you probably don't think about services too often,
but they are everywhere, and you're interacting with dozens, if not hundreds of them every day.
Services range from product-based to intangible;
and from simple, such as online videos, car mechanics, and in-store shopping
to complicated: staying at a hotel, mortgages, and public transit
to highly complex: education, healthcare, and government services.
As you can see, services affect most areas of our lives.
Actually, Services are so prolific that they now account for a majority of the world's GDP.
So, what do service designers do?
Every service is different, so there's no one procedure set in stone.
However, service designers usually collaborate with many other disciplines while following these basic steps:
We begin by talking to everyone involved with, or affected by the service - collectively called stakeholders -
to deeply understand their ideas on what an ideal experience would look like.
Compiling this research gives us a complete, bird's-eye view of the current service
and what's required to satisfy the needs and motivations of each group.
Based on these findings, we then work with the stakeholders to create a variety of ideas that we believe will improve the service.
Next, we test our most appealing ideas with real people using 'service prototypes' -
which are mock-ups of an idea that allow someone to experience how it feels to interact directly with new aspects of a service.
For example, a small team of designers can quickly test different kinds of appointments and express lanes
to see how these changes can best improve their waiting line experience.
Or, we might have employees at one DMV location provide customers with free coffee, wifi, and a comfortable lounge area
in order to test how these small changes can improve the overall experience.
Repeating these phases many times allows us to better understand the problem
while polishing our ideas and collecting them into a complete service solution.
At the end of the process we share the newly redesigned service with the relevant stakeholders
and provide them with a plan for implementing, sustaining, and evolving it in the future.
So, what are the results?
When service design is done well, it's like running a highly-constructive group therapy session,
in which stakeholders build symbiotic relationships and unify on the common goal of producing great service experiences.
This leads to services that are desirable, enjoyable, effective, and efficient
for providers, consumers, and society.