What does a Service Designer do?

Is the question that makes most of the service designers freak out .

Together with the increasing demand from the companies who want to improve their customer experience, more and more designers started to involve in business processes and consequently, more and more people started to hear about service design and various applications of design thinking. And we, ex-designers of products and graphics, new designers of ‘experiences’ started to encounter with that question: “Yes, but, what’s service design?”

Many non-designers have difficulty to understand what a service designer does and if this world really needs them. When I am asked this question, I always feel nervous, I don’t know where to start explaining. From very general to specific, I say that we are creative problem solvers and help companies, governments and other service providers to be human-centric, better understand the people to whom they are serving and serve them better by making their experiences easier and more fluent. It can be as simple as improving the experience of citizens when using public transportation, or making less painful and less stressful the experience of a person who needs to go through the process of making check-ups at hospital. When I start talking about the ideal world I have in my mind where people collaborate by helping each other etc. and see myself as one of those heroes who can contribute to this positive change, they look at me as if looking at a kid talking about flying pink elephants.