Lessons of a Service Designer
By: Hannah Reilly
Tags: Design Thinking, User Experience Design, User Experience, UX, Service Design

What I learned in my first year as a Service Designer

In January 2018 I was an assistant manager of a UK high street bank, staring at my computer and pondering what had happened to the last 10 years.

I had no idea what a Service Designer was. To me a designer made clothes, or picked out the right sofa to match your curtains. I won’t bore you with the details of how I came across it, but to say I stumbled into the job would be an understatement. It’s probably more accurate to say I leant over, tripped, and fell straight into the rabbit hole.

My learning curve over the last year has been somewhat steep and so I wanted to share those learns with others. Perhaps you are new and looking for some insight, or maybe you’re experienced and just want to reminisce. Or, for all I know, you’re an octopus with eight arms — in which case you have just enough limbs to juggle the outside expectations of being a Service Designer.

Lesson 1: Failure is an option

As a self-professed perfectionist and competitive person this took me a long time to get to grips with, even though I heard it on a weekly basis. After all, people only tell you it’s okay to lose if they’re on the losing side right? No one has ever walked out of a pub quiz and said “well — we might have come last, but we all learned something”.

The truth is, failure does teach you things. It teaches you how to adapt your work and overcome problems. It shows you where your weaknesses are and helps you design better services. More than that though, a failure is a success. Boiled down, it’ll give you an equal measure of information as a success did, followed by what will probably be some of your most inspirational and motivational work. So go forth and fail — fail quickly and fail often. I believe in your ability to fail.

Lesson 2: You cannot plan time for innovation and inspiration

For the first 6 months I tried planning in time to be creative and to ideate. I would sit, post-its in hand, staring blankly at a piece of paper and wait. Perhaps I’d use a cheeky technique to try and kick-start the right side of my brain!… Who knew post-it’s could be so demotivating when they’re still empty after 20 minutes.

Everyone is so different and I definitely can’t give you a one-size-fits-all solution to how to be creative. What I can do is tell you that when I need to do some creative thinking, I try to build the right environment. I’ll take myself somewhere quiet, listen to some awful jazz, and just start scribbling. Try going for a walk, or making a brew.

I’ve had far more innovative ideas stood in the shower singing Disney songs than I ever have sat at a desk.

Lesson 3: Get used to not being able to describe what you do

“What do you do for work?” — 6 words I never thought I’d struggle with. I was so proud of my old job; at 19 I could tell people I was an assistant manager at a bank. My mum was proud too, she was like a human LinkedIn, constantly waffling to strangers about what I did for a living.

But when I became a Service Designer I had no idea how to explain it. Here are some of my failures (which we now know I learned from):

“I’m a designer, but for people” — I’m definitely working in a laboratory building humans from old hamburger meat.

“It’s my job to try and fix things which are annoying, or irritating which people can only hope just go away” — I’m finding you annoying and irritating and I’m just hoping you’ll go away.

“I design processes to make people’s lives easier” — I build robots to replace people. Enjoy being a taxi driver whilst you can.

My current effort: “I work with people to understand what they find difficult about their job, and then I try to fix it”.

Find your own way of explaining it, or just enjoy having people stare at you.

Lesson 4: Never assume you know the least in a room

Basic, but I needed this.

Service Design is a bit of an art — once you learn some basic rules the rest is creativity and a will to do better. A lot of the time there is no right answer so make sure your voice is heard, too.

When you became a Service Designer, you made an invisible promise to your users to do the best you can both for and with them. Your voice will often be the voice of the users so make sure you’re confident, calm and feel motivated to do the right thing. You’ve got this!

Lesson 5: Stop talking and just DO

I’m British and I love to talk. And talk. (I might possibly pop an apology in there too). And talk some more.

But talking often leads to very little in the way of results or in value. We’ve all sat in a meeting for 2 hours where very little happens and nothing happens afterwards. It’s demotivating, frustrating, and a terrible waste of everyone’s time.

Instead of talking about what you might do, just try making a thing. Sketch out the idea you’re trying to explain, or just ask the user to tell you what colour they like better instead of researching what colour makes people feel fuzzier. Research, consideration and discussion all have a place in the world, but it shouldn’t be at the detriment of actually giving it a go.

This list could’ve been a mile long, but these are my biggest, most memorable learns from the last 12 months.

Here’s to failing, singing in the shower, confusing strangers, feeling confident, and just ruddy well giving it a shot.