In the book “This is Service Design Thinking” Marc & Jakob referred the basic steps of service design. Including Exploration, Creation, Reflection and Implementation. And at the beginning of their introduction to “Exploration”, they gave a clear advice, that service designers’ first mission, is to discover customer company’s culture and goal.

True. “Precise knowledge of self and precise knowledge of the threat leads to victory.” The concept was emerged from ancient Chinese military treatise several centuries ago.

This step is even crucial when your customers’ profession are NOT consumer services or consumer products. Say, elevator for skyscrapers, surveillance system for enterprise or government, anti-virus or firewall for airport, etc. You’ll find that you knows little in that vertical. Without a well-structured stakeholder interview before you put resource in, you’ll get nothing from your research. Or, you’ll never know how to start.

Several topic you need to figure out in stakeholder interview:

1. How they design and produce product or service?
2. How’s the internal communication like?
3. How they sell their product or service?
4. How can their customer feedback their opinion?
5. Why they need assistant from you?

Draw models or maps from your interview, so when you hit into a mess in your research, you’ll know whom to talk, and what to solve.