Designing for Service: Creating an Experience Advantage

The following is a review of “Designing for Service: Creating an Experience Advantage” by Shelly Evenson and Hugh Dubberly.

Design

Design is the process of creating something new that fits in with what already exists or changes it in a positive way. Designers use their creativity and technical skills to come up with solutions to problems that people face in their everyday lives. Everything that has not come from nature has been designed in some way, even if it was not done so consciously. Design is a complex process that takes into account the technological, social, and economic requirements of a situation, as well as the biological necessities and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume, and space.

Service

Services can be defined as performances or as activities or events that form a perceivable product through interaction with designed elements. For purposes of this discussion, we put forth the definition described by Jean Gadrey: a service is a change in the conditions of a person or a good belonging to some economic unit, which is brought about as the result of the activity of some other economic unit with the prior agreement of the former person or economic unit. Gadrey goes on to explain that a service should first be considered a process and illustrates service as a triangle that includes three primary elements: service provider, customer/client/user, and transformation of a reality.

Service Design

Designing for service is a process of creating a resonating system that intentionally creates value for the customer through interaction and, in doing so, long-term relationships are created. The goal of designing for service is to create a system that choreographs an experience that others design, in order to create value for the customer and long-term relationships between providers and customers. This is done by bringing together skills, methods, and tools for creating and integrating systems of customer interaction.

People seek out experiences that fulfill their needs and satisfy their wants. People today want experiences that support their values, and they are willing to pay more for experiences that do this. Great experiences are leading to a demand for even better experiences. In designing-for-service experiences, we need to provide the opportunity for customers to have meaningful, compelling, and fulfilling experiences that address their needs and satisfy wants. We need to provide the resources for people to design, so that they can create their own experiences.

Designers need to be aware of social interaction activities in order to create better services. Too little is known about the human aspect of both the provider and the client in service definition, and that this consideration is a key differentiator in the design of a service system. People-centered research can drive innovation, and designing for service should assume that participants are the starting point. This is essential because the service designer is providing the means for participants to design for themselves. Through the use of creative, human-centered and participatory methods, service design can model how the service could be performed or provided. At the same time, service design identifies and integrates the means to provide a service with the desired qualities within the economic and strategic intent of an organization.

Process

The article discusses a different approach to designing for service innovation, which includes exploratory, generative, and evaluative research across the entire development process. This process is different from conventional approaches, where strategy is defined prior to investigation. The authors argue that the right strategy cannot be known a priori, and that instead of trying to define a service from the top down, it is better to start with exploratory research to lead to opportunities for innovation in strategy.

Exploratory Research

Exploratory research is used to uncover and understand latent and masked needs. In this type of research, techniques are used to define “what is” in the current situation or context. Methods used in exploratory research include shadowing, participant observation, and contextual inquiry. The goal of this type of research is to provide a deep understanding of the category of people under observation, their goals and needs.

Generative Research

In generative research, the goal is to verify the framing of the ‘‘what is’’ and assumptions about how to respond to the needs identified with representatives of the service participants. Early on in generative research the activities are more projective and include exercises that help people express ideas, emotions, and desires around the service experience. The exercises are designed to help people express or explore what is usually hard for them to communicate — how they feel about the given service experience on an emotional level. Later activities are more constructive and are designed to validate specific reactions to service concepts, flows, and evidence.

Evaluative Research

Evaluative research helps to determine whether the needs and expectations of people are actually met by resources that have been designed for them. The goal is to see if the resources are useful, usable, and desirable for the people who will be using them. Methods for evaluative research can be either tightly controlled, as in a lab experiment, or loosely defined, as in an extension of generative activities.

Process Specifics

The service design process consists of five major stages: observation, reflection, making, socializing, and implementing. These stages help designers to create a service system that meets the needs of users and stakeholders. Each stage has its own deliverables that help to move the process forward.

The service design process is fluid and should change according to the context but typically consists of five main stages: observation, reflection, making, socializing, and implementation. Observation involves immersion in the context and community in order to identify user and stakeholder needs. Reflection involves creating models of what the service system is and what it could be. Making involves designing the service system resources. Socializing involves creating a network for uptake within the service organization and with customers. Implementing involves bringing system resources to life.

Tools

Service designers must take into account the complexity of the resources that need to be accessible to design the service experience. To do this, they use service ecologies, experience prototyping, and service blueprinting. Service ecologies map out the participants and entities affected by the service, and the relationships between them. This helps to establish the overall service concept and identify new opportunities. Experience prototyping brings the service experience to life by having designers and stakeholders act out the service experience with specific roles and rough props. The goal is to understand the contextual level of the design experience, which is crucial for creating a successful service experience.