SDI Midterm Reflection
When I first started this class, I didn’t know anything about service design. All I knew was that I liked helping other people, and I wanted to take a course that had a creative aspect to it. As a business (finance) major, I don’t get the opportunity to take many classes that allow me to explore the systems around us and how people interact with them. I think this is the main reason why I’ve enjoyed this class so much. I find the creativity and methodology associated with design especially interesting, and I hope that I can find ways to incorporate them into my future academic and career paths.
What is service design?
Here is my current understanding of service design: Service design is an approach that puts humans’ needs first. When trying to design or improve a service, designers try to understand the big picture while also diving deep into the people and organizations involved, as well as their relationships with one another. Designers complete field research, turn their findings into insights, identify the problem, come up with potential solutions, and test them through prototyping. Finally, they settle on one prototype to build upon, and this is what is eventually introduced as the final product.
The double diamond method is often used to complete all these tasks:
Discover: Designers identify the organization’s and users’ needs.
Define: Designers interpret and align the needs. They then agree on a concept or come up with a plan to continue exploring.
Develop: Designers develop, iterate, and test solutions using prototyping and prototype testing.
Deliver: After deciding on a final prototype and refining it based on field research results, the solution is launched for mainstream usage.
Something that I find really interesting is that service designers can come from various backgrounds, and often have complex career trajectories. This was a big surprise to me, especially since most business majors have a pretty linear career path — they start in accounting, consulting, investment banking, etc. Although they occasionally switch jobs, it’s usually into a different, yet similar business field. When I think about it, however, it makes sense. People with specific degrees such as aerospace engineering can better understand the systems and people involved in that field, and this is what makes them good service designers. And on the other hand, people who specifically studied service design are observant, curious, and quick-learners. As a result, they can become involved in industries that they don’t know much about, and still come up with uniqe, viable solutions.
Over the past two months, I’ve learned a lot about the service design process. From service safaris to design jams, here’s a quick look:
1. Service Safari
I learned a lot from the service safari assignment. While personally going through the user journey to get my comfort food from Sabieng Thai, I realized how easy and important it is to identify physical and digital touchpoints. Previously, I hadn’t paid much attention to the process of ordering food on Grubhub and going to pick it up at Sabieng Thai, but the service safari helped me understand parts of the process that I enjoyed and parts that can be improved. Through this, I was able to understand more about the touchpoints that come together to make a successful business — even small characteristics can be crucial. For example, Sabieng Thai’s street sign was placed right behind a light. Why? So that it is easy for customers to identify the restaurant in the dark.
This service safari also taught me the importance of knowing how to use different communication mediums. There were aspects of my service safari presentation that were different from my service safari journal, and this resulted in the two mediums telling slightly different stories. It is important for people in various career paths, not just service designers, to be able to communicate properly through different methods. An email should tell the same story as a spoken conversation, and so on.
2. Stakeholder Mapping
What is one of the most important aspects when examining a service? Understanding who is involved in the service, and how they are involved. Stakeholder mapping taught me how to understand the key players in a business, as well as how they interact and influence one another. This is key information for a service designer, because it helps them understand which stakeholders will be most affected by the decisions they make. It also helps them identify which stakeholders play a large role in the service and therefore need to be contacted frequently. I found it extremely interesting how stakeholder maps can change so much depending on who the user is.
3. Journey Mapping
I really enjoyed the journey mapping exercise. This taught me how to better understand the user journey, and I realized that there’s more to it than the physical tasks that the user completes. The users’ thought process and feelings are also very important, because any negative thoughts/feelings could lead to the user deciding to not use the service. A professor in my marketing class told me that with each additional button that a user has to click or each additional step that they have to take, a large portion of the users decided to quit using the product. As such, understanding the users’ thoughts and emotions is essential to making sure that they are comfortable and happy with the service. Journey mapping also introduced me to the importance of field research — designers can’t just assume that the users are feeling a certain way, they need to go out and interview users. Afterwards, designers can identify potential problems and can work towards solving them.
4. Service Blueprint
“A service blueprint is a map of user journey, touchpoints, and backstage processes.” This quote is taken from the description under the Service Blueprint Exercise on Mural. What I found most interesting about this exercise was the distinction between the frontstage and the backstage. Previously, when trying to understand a service/business I had never considered all the mechanics and workers that do work that consumers don’t see. For example, I knew that people work in factories to make the food sold in McDonald’s, but when asked about McDonald’s workers, I only thought about the employees who are visible when I go to McDonald’s. This was a huge mistake, and this assignment helped me realize that by thinking in that manner, I missed a lot of the people and work that are essential to services.
5. Service Analysis
The service analysis is essentially a combination of all the past activities. After understanding a service, creating a stakeholder map, and putting together a high level blueprint, designers are able to better understand the service and any future opportunities for the service to be improved.
The service analysis presentation also taught me a lot about good presentation skills. Next time, I’ll make sure to put less words on the slides so that it will be easier for the audience to pay attention to what we’re presenting. I also want to remember that preparing while lookign at your laptop is different from presenting on the board — it’s awkward to have to repeatedly look over my shoulder while presenting, so next time, I need to make sure to know the information on the slides better. I’d also like to make sure to practice our presentation positions with my group a few times before presenting. During the service analysis presentation, we had to switch spots a few times, and it was both awkward and unprofessional.
6. Design Jams
Out of all the activities that we’ve done in class so far, the design jam has been my favorite. The vague prompt threw me off a little, but I understand that the real world is the same — things aren’t always properly defined, and the world is always is changing. I especially enjoyed the ideation and rough prototyping. It was fascinating seeing what we kind of prototypes my group, as well as the other groups, came up with considering that we had limited materials and time.
This exercize showed me that you don’t have to have an exquisite prototype to explain and test your ideas, anything that can clearly get the point across is good enough. I found a short video by IDEO that shows how simple sketches can act as good first prototypes, and this is something that I’d like to explore further. I haven’t practiced drawing since elementary school, but I’ve realized that it’s a very important skill to have, especially when working with people who may not speak the same language as me.
Conclusion
I’m not sure if I will get the chance to specifically design services in my future career, but I believe that the steps used in design research fit other uses as well. From a business perspective, it can be used to help identify client interactions, needs, and wants during a merger or acquisition. How do the companies’ actions impact one another? How can we find a solution regarding how to work with and satisfy each company without harming the other one? Design research will also be useful to understand the role that a company plays in society as a whole, and to find aspects of their business where there are opportunities for useful changes to be implemented.
The information and skills regarding communication that we’ve learned in this class will also be very important regardless of my future career. Learning how to communicate using different mediums and with people from different cultural backgrounds are two things that I think everyone should practice and be able to do effectively. After all, if a person isn’t able to communicate well with other people, then they will lose the support that will help them make their ideas come to life.
