Hey, what the fuck is Service Design?

About systems-oriented service design:

Service design is all about enabling people to experience services in a more pleasant, meaningful and smooth manner.

While I quite like service design on its own, I think it gains potency when combined with systems thinking and digital technologies, thereby leading to design of product-service system ecologies. In this approach, the service is embedded in a broad intervention strategy and becomes the leverage point in an entire system. The service interacts with the other components of the system in order to achieve the goal of the system. 

This view on service design is particularly relevant in the design of public services that address social issues. 

The product-service system design process also generates insights into conditions necessary to make the service successful, such as digital structures, modified regulations or governance models, and deals with strategies for introducing and scaling new pathways of working within the established regime.

An answer by Kristel Van Ael

Brussels, Belgium
Design director and partner at Namahn