Engine Service Design Process
A bit of context
Engine is a consultancy that is pretty much focused on service design.
As a company, its goal is ‘designing remarkable services and customer experiences and working with organisations to deliver and sustain them’. Engine can have a less technological view of the world than other players in the space. The company believes that ‘great service is all about people.’ At the time of writing, the teams at Engine are present in London and Dubai.
What I like about it
The first obvious thing I like about this process is that it's a loop. The process visually shows that a service is something that can be continuously improved, and the loop makes that clear. In a way, the loop also helps me to go out of the project thinking, where I think that once the new service is built I'm done with the project. No, there is still work to do, even after a new service is launched.
The second thing I particularly like in this process is that is has two level of depths. If you want to explain in two seconds how the process works you can just say: "It's a loop between three things: Identitfy, Build and Measure". Super quick to explain and understand. But then, the second level, with 8 steps shows that there is some hard work to do.
A last thing which I find very smart in how this process is visualized is that the borders of the steps have some overlap. For example, in the more detailed ring where there are 8 phases, the phase called "Generate" overlaps two phases of the simplified ring that has 3 phases. "Generate" is something that seems to happen both in "Identify" and in "Build". This shows to me that even if you have clear phases, there are transitions and overlaps between the different phases and that it's not always crystal clear where you are. And this, to me, makes the process more humble and real.
The second thing I particularly like in this process is that is has two level of depths. If you want to explain in two seconds how the process works you can just say: "It's a loop between three things: Identitfy, Build and Measure". Super quick to explain and understand. But then, the second level, with 8 steps shows that there is some hard work to do.
A last thing which I find very smart in how this process is visualized is that the borders of the steps have some overlap. For example, in the more detailed ring where there are 8 phases, the phase called "Generate" overlaps two phases of the simplified ring that has 3 phases. "Generate" is something that seems to happen both in "Identify" and in "Build". This shows to me that even if you have clear phases, there are transitions and overlaps between the different phases and that it's not always crystal clear where you are. And this, to me, makes the process more humble and real.
Go deeper
Like the process by Livework, I found this process also in the slide deck called "Exploring Service Design: User Experience Beyond the Screen" compiled by Ariel van Spronsen.