Recently I have often found myself discussing service design and its definition(s). Design professionals often seem to lack theoretical education and have sometimes problems understanding key concepts. On the other hand it needs to be acknowledged that the meaning of concepts depends on the context they are used in. Furthermore, the meaning of concepts changes over time. This means that purely academic terminological definitions are not good enough.
Finnish web site palvelumuotoilu.fi defines service design to equal the design of experiences that take place in time and space, and reach people through various touchpoints. This definition contains a huge conceptual mistake. Individuals’ experiences cannot be designed; they are always personal. We can design service processes or service environments, but not experiences or mental images. These are filtered through each individual’s personal history and world view, and they can only be affected up to a certain limit. A service can be experienced in thousands of different ways, which makes service design very challenging.
Let’s take another example; Wikipedia states that “Service Design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service, in order to improve its quality, the interaction between service provider and customers and the customer’s experience.” This definition describes the nature of service design a lot better. However, it still leaves key competence areas related to service design outside the definition. My current definition of service design includes:
1. analyses related to service development
2. foresight and strategy work related to service development
3. creation of new service ideas and service concepts
4. design of service processes
5. design of service environments
6. Guidance related to the development of service processes and environments
7. Coaching or training related to service development (e.g. tuning, editing, or changing service attitudes)
In addition, service design should be done in close interaction with other development work. Service design is a part of brand management, and therefore all marketing and public relations material related to a service should be done synchronously with service design processes. Designing service processes requires knowledge and competences regarding the Internet and social media. The importance of mobile communicational tools and crowdsourcing is also increasing. The biggest change, however, is the position of consumers. In the ServiceD project, prosumerism is a key viewpoint and focus is also given to participatory development work that involves client organisations’ management and (key) personnel as well as service designers.
