Service is the best design
Every morning I commute to work by train, and I purposefully get off at a station a decent walking distance from our office. This helps me get focused for the busy day ahead.
By the time I get to my desk, I’m ready for a full day of standups, 1:1's, sparring sessions, design sprints, and keynotes. This means there are only small pockets of time between these sessions — and that’s my chance to re-sync my mind with a coffee.
This is where I really like the Hey You app that I use to order coffee from a local cafe across the street, which eliminates the need to go and wait in a queue.
I love this app, but don’t ask me to describe its UI or all of its cool features in detail. I couldn’t; I only spend time with it when I’m on the move.
As designers, we can sometimes obsess over the design of our favourite products, but in this case I don’t care much about the latest version begging me to update it…or whether it’s skeuomorphic or flat… I simply care that it gets the job done without needing more than 15 seconds of my time.
Now that’s service.
In fact, when I do have a small window of time available before my next session, I’ll start walking to the elevators and perform three actions on the app — tap the star icon (favourites), tap the first order (my favourite order) and tap the “Place order” button.
This app goes beyond just being an app… it’s a service that gives you access to convenience and efficiency through a cashless and queue-less experience.
The point is, we often get too caught up in the craft of making the UI perfect or creating pixel-perfect mockups, when we should first be thinking about the problem and how best we can provide an experience that fits the situation.
I’m not saying that crafting the perfect UI is not important. However, I would argue that it’s more important to focus first on the service that your product contributes to in providing an overall experience.
When we’re head down crafting, we need to remember to look up from time to time — see the bigger picture and take notice of where we can create better touch points along the journey.
Once we’ve solved the core needs of what our products must deliver, we can go off and spend time on the craft where sweating the details, micro-interactions, and delighting customers are the order of the day.
We also have to accept that our product only plays one small part in our users’ daily lives — if we’re lucky!
So, the next time you have something to design, I challenge you to focus 80% of your time on making sure you’ve solved the right problem for the right person at the right time. Then spend 20% going deep on making it look and feel good.
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