What is Service Design? Mid-Term Reflection
When I think of how to explain service design to someone else, I think of the exercise we did with Vandan, and when I volunteered to try to explain it to him as if he was a 10-year-old. I would describe service design to anyone the same way I described it to the pretend-10-year-old-Vandan.
If you can imagine walking into your favorite restaurant, you might ask yourself, why is it your favorite restaurant? Do you eat inside or outside (depending on local safety guidelines)? What are the waiters like? Is the menu on a piece of paper or a digital interface? What do you like about the restaurant? What do you not like about it? What would you improve?
All of these questions are important to understanding the service design experience. Whether it’s going to your favorite restaurant or buying shoes online, acquiring the product means going through a process full of ‘touch points’, which refer to the specific interactions you have (with people, places, or things), that are involved in the process of acquiring the product. Service design is increasingly popular in enhancing consumerism and keeping people engaged with certain products. Yelp reviews or App Store reviews highlight this movement towards the emphasis on a user’s service experience. User reviews unintentionally emphasize one or more these touch points, typically in a very positive or very negative light. Were the servers nice? Did the customer support chat line help you with your issue? Did the facilities have air conditioning? Is the digital interface responsive? Was the shipping box handled improperly? The growth of service design as a concept and the increase in the number of designers whose job it is to improve and enhance it across products goes hand in hand with the number of platforms that are available for users to share their experience with the product and service, which in turn, influences other users. On a basic level for friends and family, that is service design. It acknowledges the experience beyond the end product itself, taking into account one’s experiences that are adjacent to it.
Throughout the past seven weeks, my learning journey was marked by the intricacies of service design that we dove deeper into as the weeks went on. The service safari set the baseline for what I knew about service design. To me, it related to my experience with ordering Mexican food next to the Home Depot in my hometown. My touch points included the grocery store that it was located in, the formation of the line, the display of the ingredients, and most notably, the friendliness of the people who work there. As the weeks continued, I learned more and more about the product service system that surrounds an experience as simple as ordering food to be made right in front of you.
The process of extrapolation marked Week 3 through Week 7. In week 3, we covered the user journey, which was similar to the way I had done my service safari. We then covered stakeholder mapping, which at first, I felt I had adequate experience in because of previous projects that pushed me to define a stakeholder system surrounding my environmental research. However, when it came to a product and/or service, those stakeholders were a bit foreign to me. I think of the exercise I did with Brian where we took a food delivery app and identified the stakeholders into categories of Core, Direct, and Indirect. I found myself going onto the app’s website to identify what their company structure looked like. We then discussed between us how much perceived influence a director of marketing has in comparison to a director of engineering. This exercise also highlighted the background actors that I hadn’t considered before. What role do investors play? What about the neighboring restaurants? I felt (rightfully) challenged by this experience because it required research as well as a better understanding of the economic hierarchies that governed these products and services. This out of the box thinking prepared me for the blueprint mapping that came the following week.
The blueprint mapping with the Albert/class selection example was personally a very challenging experience. I found myself being able to contribute a lot to one component (e.g. how choosing an elective influenced my NYU journey) and not at all to another (e.g. what NYU systems influence the kinds of classes that are available, depending on major and school). However, it was valuable practice for the mini project that Lillian, Brian, and I worked on. We revisited the food delivery app experience and completed the service blueprint through the lens of an NYU student ordering takeout during finals week. I felt that the most critical part of the blueprint was identifying the frontstage and backstage actors. One consideration (of many) that we had to make was whether the restaurants (aka the vendors) were considered frontstage or backstage. Technically, a user only interacts with the delivery driver, but for the vendors themselves, they can also be considered a user because they subscribe to the food delivery service in hopes of increasing sales. This experience highlighted the complexities of service design and what considerations one has to make about the ‘status’ of a stakeholder, action, or emotion while staying true to the user’s experience. For this project, I did user research with my former roommates in New York, whose insights guided our recommendations for the service.
Looking at service design as a career more broadly, I realized the interesting position that designers are in. Although they technically work for a firm or as a freelancer, their role is to place themselves between a user, product, and the system around it. Designers have to prioritize empathy, authenticity, and accuracy in its reporting of a product service system as well as a user’s experience. The article “The Truth About Customer Experience” by Alex Rawson, Ewan Duncan, and Conor Jones taught me how the desire to learn the user experience leads to internal changes that put employees in a research setting between the customers and the company’s product itself. It seems that more companies are being created already set with the infrastructure to understand the user experience, hence the growth of UX/UI as a career field.
In the weeks that followed this class, we started to look at service design and designing more broadly, including what it means to explain it to others, depending on who they are, and where to place yourself in conversations about product development and user experience. “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer really stuck out to me as we dove deeper into communicating with others in this field and in our work more broadly. This connected to the lecture in that empathy is not just a part of the design process, but also in the work environment in general. When working with a team, that same energy needs to be had in order to develop experiences, products, and services that are sensitive to cultural nuances and specific populations’ needs. This means acknowledging the cultures and backgrounds of your colleagues, as well as their personalities and work styles.
Today’s group introduction was very relevant to this. On the Mural and in our breakout room discussion, we talked a lot about our personal work styles and what motivates us to work. Someone had mentioned that they struggle to start something, but are motivated to work on it when there’s at least some of the work done. Another had mentioned that their perfectionism sometimes holds them back from seeing the bigger picture. I had mentioned that I start things very early, which can sometimes come across as owning the project and defining what it will look like. This was a very productive conversation and ultimately a good practice for teamwork in general from here on out. Learning about the motivations, skills, and struggles of others leads to productive and exciting work, especially when it involves a user’s experience and the subsequent service design that stems from it.
The industry exposure through our virtual field trip helped me ground my learnings into the real world. Seeing how healthcare involved a lot of user research, and how designing a city insinuates development methods that could apply to other cities around the world, proved that service design is an approach that is widely applicable to different industries and sectors. I found it interesting the path that each individual took to where they ended up today. What really stuck out to me was how each presenter perceived their own work it the context of their personal journeys. It reminded me that careers are meant to be changed the more you learn, and I feel that the design process, even when just used in one’s work, bleeds into the rest of their lives in regards to the possibilities they are exposed to. Even for entrepreneurs, this approach is a useful tool for deciding what path to take in their entrepreneurship journey, seeing how it relates to their personal experiences, and determining the product/service-related needs and wants of a potential user. The Design Jam related directly to this sentiment. Just based on a simple prompt, we crowdsourced our ideas, engaged in quick discussion and research, and developed a storyline. This exercise circled back to our very first assignment, and I could see the growth in myself in regards to my understanding of service design. I also got to continue my improv roles as a result of being in this class. I find myself taking on opportunities to present, which for me is comfortable, but I am reminded of how to make sure that my teammates also feel heard and acknowledged.
Personally, I hope to incorporate service design into environmentalism. As someone who majors in environmental studies, much of my coursework covers the ways that people are unaware of degradation. I believe that product and service development towards sustainability will help aid conservation efforts. Reusable products and those made of sustainable materials present an opportunity to create an experience around it that hints to consumers the values of conservation and sustainability more broadly. Since it is a very strong movement, there is a community aspect about it that product and service developers are inclined to touch on. For example, nature-themed clothing brands will donate part of their proceeds to environmental charities, which gives the consumer a feeling that they are contributing a net positive effect to environmentalism as a result of buying and wearing that shirt. Additionally, social media has created notions of community around environmentally-focused products and services. I feel that the community aspect, which is supported by the use of social media, is something that service designers are increasingly taking into account when thinking of a product experience. I hope to learn more about how technological innovations and other social forces shape the job description of a product/service designer.
This class has been an incredibly fruitful experience. There are so many intricacies to the process, yet so many broad and wide-reaching applications. I’m excited to continue this learning journey, and as a soon-to-be-NYU-graduate, I look forward to incorporating these learnings into my career.
