Experience design & Service design are under no obligation to make sense to you
This is part one in a series of small stories about the struggle of trying to grasp the real meaning of- and relation between Experience design and Service design. This is my journey of trying to understand what these spacey concepts entail.
It is almost noon — my second Americano, left to be forgotten on the coffee table in front of me, has gone cold. My mind is drifting and I feel a little stressed. I’ve been given a task from one of the partners, a very capable and articulate Englishman. It has been two weeks now and all I have is a couple of pages of notes — all stemming from documents forwarded by the partner.
I have to write an article on the relationship between Experience design and Service design.
There is just one issue: I am “only” a student assistant and it has “only” been a couple of months since I first exited the elevator entering the 4th floor of the newly renovated Hello Great Works office — in other words; my actual experience working with Service- and Experience design is limited.
My second Americano is still sitting half empty on the coffee table as I look out the window to Amager Fælled — a daytime moon visible on the blue winter sky. I feel lost — what is Experience design, what is Service design and what is their relationship?
I guess this is what our clients must feel like
You know the feeling when you kind of understand the meaning of a word and you do use it from time to time, but if someone were to ask you to explain — in your own words — what the word means.. phheeeeeww… you wouldn’t know where to start nor end. This is how I feel about Experience design and Service design: I kind of get it but I still don’t understand the full meaning of these practices. … I guess this is what our clients must feel like when walking into their first meeting with us. Somehow though , at the end of a project , they all seem to understand and appreciate our way of working and the activities related hereto. I see them enter, I see them leave, I see how wrinkled foreheads and head scratching turns into excitement and understanding. They must end up understanding what Experience- and Service design means, but how? What am I missing? Why do I feel like I am the only one who doesn’t understand? What are these spacey concept?
Part of a bigger whole
I go over my notes. I read blog posts, Medium articles and Google the meaning of both Service- and Experience design. After a lot of reading and browsing one thing is clear; there are multiple definitions of what both Service- and Experience design are. This doesn’t bring me any peace of mind — I still feel confused. But, in my mind things are starting to take shape. From what I’ve gathered so far Experience design is part of a bigger whole; Service design. I picture the moon being the equivalent of this bigger whole — a rounded astronomical body orbiting our blue planet. The moon is full of craters. Some are large, large enough to be seen from earth, other are small — too small to be see with the naked eye. Some are deep, others shallow. Some are rough, others more smooth. Craters inhabit the moon. Every crater is part of a bigger surface and in totality they affect our perception of the moon.
In my mind the moon is the mother of all experiences, the mother of all craters. Service design has a parental relationship with Experience design, why an experience de facto must be part of something bigger; a service.. (right…?). This is spacey!
So many questions
This simple yet eye-opening realisation brings some clarity, but mostly just a lot of questions, to my mind. For one;
- Is a Service made up of a string of Experiences, taking the individual on a journey from A to B? And if so; how do these intangibilities affect one another?
- Is Service design actually the design of one Experience building upon the design of the next Experience and so on? In other words: is Service design a chain of Experience design’s locked together like a chain? Or is their relationship more relative, dependent upon the strength of the individual Experience design?
- Is Service design only as strong as the weakest Experience design or can a Service be successful even with poor Experience design?
- Can you successfully design an Experience for a Service, without thinking holistically, by taken the whole of the Service into account?
- How do businesses work with Experience and Service design? Do they understand the differences? Are they making a conscious choice between either or… or even both, at the same time… if this is actually possible?
- And… is an experience always a part of Service design.. or can a service also be an experience? So, is it actually the other way around where Service design is part of a bigger whole; Experience design?
Like Star Wars and the Universe
These reflections (of what constitute the individual design activity and their mutual relationship) instills in me the same feeling as when people start talking about Star Wars or the Universe. I feel lost, yet still able to hold my composure, not revealing my total lack of understanding. I just don’t get it — and in my immediate surroundings it feels like I only find people who seem to be totally into, adept, and knowledgable about these subjects. To me it is simply still nonsense. If only I was Neil de Grass Tyson or Mark Richard Hamill.
Clearly my initial epiphany of sorts; realising the overall interrelatedness of the two activities has brought with it more questions than answers, more frustration than relief, more confusion that clarity — its like quicksand, the more I move around the space the further it sucks me into oblivion. Reading about it; both Service- and Experience design feels as fluffy as ever.
It is frustrating me, immensely.
It is too spacey.
I need to talk to someone
As I take a last sip of my half empty and cold Americano, left no more to be forgotten on the coffee table in front of me — while looking out at a disappearing daytime moon, vaguely hovering above Amager Fælled — I reluctantly come to the conclusion that I need to talk to someone with a profound understanding of what incorporates Service- and Experience design and how they are related to one another… It is a bit of a defeat, for me personally, but I must admit, to myself, that help is needed and that just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s nonsense — I need help; to answer my questions — to extract the sense from the nonsense.
To be continued…
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