Demystifying Service Design
Editor’s note: Claudia Hopkins was a user researcher at the Ontario Digital Service in 2018. Since then, she graduated at the top of the 2019 class from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver with a degree in Interaction Design, and has returned to the public sector as an Interaction Designer for Public Health England.
Earlier this year, Claudia delivered a TEDx Talk on Service Design. It focused on making service design less abstract and more tangible for audiences. She shares her thoughts on service design below.
In many disciplines, we can become so focused on our day to day specialization that explaining what we do and how we work to others can be challenging.
This is especially true in multidisciplinary teams and can create tension. Even though we all might be working to reach the same goal, we may want to approach problems in different ways based on our diverse viewpoints.
By breaking down design through my experiences working on government service delivery teams and learning about service design, I aim to help those who are not designers to understand this discipline more.
Design goes beyond ‘making things pretty’
Designers are often stereotyped as team members who ‘make things pretty’. This is a huge misconception.
There are many types of design. My practice only includes a tiny bit of visual design but is more focused on interaction design, service design and user research. Although these areas may seem separate, they are complementary.
As someone working within digital public service, I see that there are four areas of design operating at different scopes within this space:
- Visual design — how it looks
- Content design — what it says
- Interaction design — how users experience it through the steps taken and its functionality
- Service design — what happens in the wider system enabling it to work
User research is the foundation to all types of design
The essential ingredient for all designers, independent of scope, is user research. Designing services should always be evidence-based, therefore relying on user feedback is required to optimize them.
My personal journey to service design
I first heard about service design at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. I was investigating problems that could not be solved by visual design alone, and kept gravitating to service and system solutions.
At the time, I did not know how to achieve the design solutions with the design processes that I had been taught. My instructor, Maria Goncharova, is an exceptional strategic thinker and encouraged me to experiment with different design disciplines, including the professional field of service design. She recommended many books by service design experts.
But even after reading these books, service design still seemed very abstract because there were no strong case studies. Service design theory and processes need to be described through their application, like designing public services.
My curiosity lingered. A year later, I enrolled in a course devoted to service design taught by Katherine Benjamin, the founding Lab Leader of Ontario Digital Service.
Through this course, I better understood how service design and inclusive design can be tools to solve wider, societal problems and help governments work better for under served citizens.
I also learned specific service design techniques, like making ecosystem maps and service blueprints. Both techniques enable designers to conceptualize and visualize how specific design opportunities are connected to wider systems. We need to understand these connections because design choices have consequences.
Service design is most effective when testing early and often
I can’t stress the importance of testing design concepts early and often enough. The insights gathered from an early iteration of a concept can:
- strategically inform the next steps
- prevent major failures later in development, especially after money has been invested in its creation
- encourage an ethos of constant learning and improvement
- make way for a better, more user-focused product
When new to service design, testing concepts may make team-members feel uneasy because it makes us and our work vulnerable. Over time, testing will become an empowering process when we experience its impact in producing our best work.
Everyone can think like a service designer
To me, service design comes down to thinking critical thinking and a willingness to test ideas. The core of my TEDx Talk, You can be a service designer in your community, is about showcasing service design on a community level. I want anyone to see the benefit of service design — personally or professionally.
Final reflections
Learning about service design was revolutionary in my career path, especially as I wanted to work in complex environments like public service.
I hope my TEDx talk helps clarify service design approaches and you can try them in your own work or community.
If you have any thoughts on design, service design or feedback for me on my TedTalk, reach out to me on Twitter at @ClaudiaIHopkins.
