What are common mistakes company make when hiring service designers?

My two cents

Hiring a service designer is an excellent step towards creating services that are more useful, easier to understand for your customers and easier to maintain for your employees. But obviously, hiring one person is not enough. Here are a few of the mistakes I see that organisations can make when they hire a service designer:

  • Not having a budget for research and prototyping: specific actions like recruiting testers or prototyping ideas need an additional budget. For example, the service designer might have to work with an external agency to recruit testers faster or needs special tools and material to create prototypes. These things all cost. 
  • Not being ready to do some testing before implementing: service designers have a specific culture of testing things and prototyping things. This can be "unnatural" or "new" for certain organisations and needs a bit of a cultural change. If the organisation isn't ready to evolve its culture, having a service designer won't be as impactful as it could be.
  • Believing one person can do it all: As with any position, one person can not do the work that is usually done by a whole team. So there needs to be a clear conversation about what the service designer won't do. We shouldn't speak only about the tasks that the person does but also what we accept that she won't have the time to do and how we cope with that (for example: giving it externally, not doing it all, doing it minimally, etc.)

The AI answer

This is the raw answer that the generative AI ChatGPT gave me when I asked it the same question. Take it with a grain of salt. 
There are several common mistakes that companies make when hiring service designers:

  1. Not clearly defining the role and responsibilities: It’s important to have a clear understanding of what the service designer will be responsible for and what skills and experience are required for the role.
  2. Focusing solely on technical skills: While technical skills are important for a service designer, it’s also important to consider soft skills such as communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.
  3. Not considering diversity: Companies should strive to have a diverse team of service designers, as this can bring a range of perspectives and ideas to the table.
  4. Neglecting the importance of culture fit: It’s important to find a service designer who not only has the right skills and experience, but who also fits in with the company’s culture and values.
  5. Not providing adequate training and support: Service designers may need support and training to be successful in their role. It’s important for companies to provide the necessary resources and support to ensure their success.


More Service Design questions and answers like this one

Check out all the questions about hiring service designers.