What are the differences between service design and product design?
By: Bethany, Snap Out
Tags: Startup Lessons, Design Thinking, Service Design, Business, Product Design

The early-stage development and design process is easily one of the most important periods of time for any business, whether you are product or service based. After all, the decisions that you make at this stage will have a huge impact on everything from usability and accessibility, to desirability and feasibility.

So, both service design and product design as processes feed into how happy your customer or user will be. And, as such, how successful your business is in the long term!

It’s easy to fall into thinking that the two processes are exactly the same: How can product design and service design really be that different? Well, the truth is, there certainly are some similarities in the ways that they are often conducted, but there are also huge differences that you need to be aware of so that you can create the best product or service possible.

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Let’s start with the basics…

What is a product?

You probably know this one!

A product is tangible. That’s to say, that a customer can buy the product and then hold or store it somewhere (be this in the “real world” or on a computer or device). Most often, its value is generated and derived from the product by the user. The user already knows what they want from the product, hence they buy it.

From pots and pans, to t-shirts and video games, all of these are products.

What is a service?

On the other hand, a service is something that someone experiences and isn’t necessarily owned. For example, health care services or streaming platforms such as Netflix, Spotify and Audible. In each of these cases, the service is not tangible and only has value when it is performed for the user.

With this in mind, it’s true to say that whilst services are by definition people-centred, products aren’t.

As you can imagine, the differences in these definitions means that there are also contrasts in the processes of designing products and of designing services.

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What are the key principles of Product Design?

As Smashing Magazine point out, “Product design is the process of identifying a market opportunity, clearly defining the problem, developing a proper solution for that problem and validating the solution with real users.”

As such, design thinking is a brilliant foundation for the product design process, since it is so focused on finding actionable and practical solutions to the problems of users.

We’ve spoken a lot about design thinking on our blog. In fact, we covered the topic just last week and explained how it differs from Human-Centred Design.

Design Thinking is a problem-solving process: First you begin by understanding and scoping a clear problem, then you focus on how you can solve it. One of the ways that this is best illustrated is through the Design Council’s Double Diamond:

This is such a valuable process for product designers, as it focuses on product development from one end to the other, not just the design itself. This helps designers to define exactly what they’re trying to achieve in terms of their users’ needs, thereby creating something with a much greater chance of success. More than simply the look and feel of a product is considered!

Again, for more practical steps on how to understand your users through design thinking, read our last blog post.

Understanding the Design Thinking framework, this then feeds into the product development process. Each project will look slightly different, but here’s how the general flow looks:

Defining the product vision Product research User analysis Ideation Design Testing and validation Post-launch activities

What are the key principles to service design?

Let’s hear from the masters themselves, shall we?

According to The Service Design Network, it is “The activity of planning and organising people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers.

The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers.”

To put it simply then, the process has a focus on ensuring that a service is meeting the needs of all users as effectively as possible at every single step.

In terms of implementing service design, according to Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider, the methodology has five basic principles:

User-centred, through understanding the user by doing qualitative research Co-creative, by involving all relevant stakeholders in the design process Sequencing, by partitioning a complex service into separate processes Evidencing, by visualising service experiences and making them tangible Holistic, by considering touch-points in a network of interactions and users

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One of the key aspects of effective services design is — you guessed it! — research. Qualitative research including observations and interviews are conducted, allowing the designer to foresee a variety of situations in which the user may interact with the service. These insights are then used to create personas, customer journey maps, value network maps and stakeholder maps.

Armed with all of this, co-creation sessions are put in place to generate service prototypes which are then developed iteratively. At this point, the designer is able to create the best possible experience for all of the actors on the service, including stakeholders!

Key takeaways

Whilst service design is focused on the organisation and planning of people and communication in order to create optimal service quality, product design is primarily concerned with solving real problems through functionality , not just what a product looks and feels like. This is thanks to the intangibility of services, versus the physical nature of products.

However, at the heart of both product and service design is the desire to create the best possible user experience. They are each user-centred and keep customers at the heart of their decision making.

Through focusing on the processes of product design and of service design, businesses are able to effectively generate more sales, a larger amount of customer loyalty and customer growth more widely.

What’s not to love?

If you have any questions at all about either product design or service design, simply drop them in the comments and we’d be more than happy to help!

The Snap Out Team ⛰