Service design is developing better services – a better service experience. It is an innovative and transformational way of doing, thinking and making; it is a melting pot for existing disciplines and principles, offering a fresh approach to developing what we are all surrounded by – services. It uses qualitative and quantitative research, facts and numbers, but is simultaneously a hands-on way of developing services together with users.

As an example, a service designer might be asked to solve why children’s hospital customers are unhappy. The process might end up with designing a whole visit to a doctor or just the waiting areas. It begins by understanding who the users are and the current means and ways of going about the activity by observing and interviewing parents, children and staff. Customers and people related to the service are invited to ideate together. The focus can be on the way to ease the reservation process or ways to make the kids feel better while waiting for the doctor.

The Service Designer’s task is to facilitate the process from defining the focus, ideating, prioritizing, testing and making an example of the service, developing it and defining how to measure its success. The result should not be predefined, as the process builds it. In the case of the example cited, it can be changes in the reservation process and in the in customer path, comfortable chairs with a sleeping position and cartoons on TV. What matters is up to the customers, and service design, with its inclusive, empathic and human-centric focus is a great approach to finding just that. 

 

Helsinki, Finland
Service Designer, Senior Lecturer at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences