My two cents

At the end of the webinar about the history of Service Design in Switzerland, we talked with the participants and asked ourselves: "Should Service Design have another name?"

Some participants explained how the term is abstract and needs a ton of explanation.

When their grandparents ask about their job, answering I'm a service designer creates more doubt than pride in the eyes of their grandparents. Then comes a long explanation.

I have to admit that the name isn't an easy one for me too. I often have to explain what is a service, and then explain that everything is a decision and that therefore deciding how we interact with people through phone calls, staff members, communication, and so on, is something we can intentionally decide to improve.

So yes, it's not a name that is self-explanatory. But maybe that's also the great value of that name. It's a name that doesn't produce an immediate image in the mind of the person you are interacting with, so it forces us to clarify, explain and have a real conversation to create a shared meaning. And that, to me, after reflection, seems to be rather something more positive than a big problem.

What experts say

On the other hand, I've seen how smart people decide consciously to remove the word service from tools like the service blueprint. See for that the great article by Megan Erin Miller called Why we renamed the service blueprint.

Here a few excerpts from that article that inspire:

"The name explains nothing, and requires you to spend precious time on a mini lecture explaining how, “All things can be reframed as services…"

"It’s not just useful for services. “Service” is a narrow word to define what is really a broad system of how the organization delivers. There are many organizations that are “product” orgs that can benefit from blueprinting, and also situations where the term “service” may not apply."

"We believe the more appropriate and accurate name for the method is: Experience Delivery Blueprinting, or Experience Blueprinting for short."

As it's often the case with such philosophical questions, the answer isn't much clearer once we tried to answer it, hehe. But at least it got me thinking.