What is Service Design?
By: Sarah Drummond
Tags: User Experience, Org Design, Design, Service Design

First, we need to start with what services are.

Services help us do a thing, provide us, a person, with some kind of value, helping us reach an outcome that we need or want to do.

So for example;

I want a hot drink, I might go to a cafe who will make one for me. I’m on the go, so I don’t have an espresso machine or coffee beans, so I use a service to provide a hot drink. That’s a really simplified example.

I want to get somewhere, I might use a transport service like a taxi. I don’t own the car, maybe I don’t have the ability to drive, so I use a service to do that for me.

I’m feeling unwell, and I want to get better, I might use a health service like a doctor. I don’t have the knowledge, skills or equipment to get better on my own, so I use a service to get help to do that.

Services help us do something, usually without us having to own the costs, risk, or sometimes, labour of delivering it.

And they will deliver different forms of value even if the product and the outcome at the core is the same.

So for example;

I need to stay overnight in a city and get some sleep. There are lots of different services that could enable me to reach my outcome of getting a good night of sleep.

I might use a hostel

I might rent a tent

I might rent a room in someone’s home, or their sofa

I might stay in a 5 star resort

I might use a home rental service

I might book it direct from the provider

I might use a third party accommodation booking service

Ultimately, all of these services help me reach my goal.

They all help me get a night of sleep but in different ways to meet my personal wants, needs, budget, preferences and context I am in.

The user experience across all these options could be very different and this is something that can be designed.

All services have ‘a user experience’. This is the overall end-to-end experience we have as an individual using a service to achieve our end goal.

We can’t design someone’s individual experience, as we are all different and how we respond to a service will differ based on the context we are using it, the level of service we receive on the day and our individual needs and who we are.

However, we can consciously design how a service works and how it meets outcomes and user needs. From the steps and the order they are in, to how accessible it is, how it looks and feels to the content and instructions on how to use it.

Let’s take a mental health service for example. You might use their website to book an appointment for therapy.

The interaction design of the product, in this case a website and booking function, should ensure the user of that service can book an appointment easily.

A sign at a local health service which may not feel like it is designed to be welcoming for users

The user experience of these two different mental health service providers might differ though. One may be open and inviting and seem flexible to book, the other may be strict and make it difficult to book. Both have the same product on offer, and are trying to achieve the same goal but the offer might come across in different ways. I know which one I would choose, if I had the privilege of choosing.

And this is because of design. Sometimes the design is a conscious decision making process in how it can meet needs.

One service might be thinking how to reduce anxiety in the booking process, put a user at ease with helpful content, make it accessible if someone is using a screen reader who has a visual impairment, in other words, really thinking about the user experience.

The other, despite wanting the user to reach the exact same goal, might be unconsciously making it difficult because they are trying to stop users from booking more than one appointment, or have been frustrated with cancellations in the past so use aggressive language to ensure users turn up.

The user experience people have of a product come from both conscious and unconscious design decisions.

When there is the privilege of choosing a service, organisations need to work hard to ensure their service works for you as their profitability may be predicated on attracting users. When there is no other choice, in the case of a Government service, service design is still important to meet regulation, work hard for citizens and reduce the cost of service delivery.

But the user experience in the case of our mental health example is much wider than just booking an appointment. It starts from finding and choosing the service to engage with, to undertaking therapy, building goals, checking out and helping with relapse.

This is where Service Design really comes in.

Quite simply put, service design is the design of services.

A simplified version of a user journey map. A common technique used to highlight at various fidelities what the user experience is, the steps involved, the interactions a user has and how an organisation might deliver this. Good maps will highlight outcomes for the user and organisation.

Service design is concerned with ensuring the overall end-to-end experience that takes place over time, helps meet overall outcomes for the intended service, in the case of a mental health service, for a person to recover, or get better, or feel supported in their journey.

So all the interactions a user has from booking an appointment to accessing therapy helps meet the overall goal. Designing a service is concerned with ensuring everything that goes into doing that is joined up and meeting user needs across channels from on to offline.

It’s important to recognise that service design’s dogma on meeting user needs isn’t always the right approach. There might be some services that need designed to act in the interest of an individual’s safety and runs counter to their individual needs and preferences (child protection) or wider societal or environmental needs that need considered.

Good service design really should focus on helping meet the overall goal for someone or the outcomes intended (like keeping someone safe) and what the service offer really is, not just focus on the process of doing something. If I want to go on holiday, learn to drive, buy a house, start a business, keep the peace, many of these overall goals require me as a user or a delivery organisation to interact with a whole host of different agents, departments and organisations thus leading to a fragmented and often difficult and frustrating experience.

Then there’s the how, which borrows techniques from more traditional recognised methods of design like prototyping and working in visual materials, but for now, we are focusing on the what.