In today’s class we covered what service design is and the methods of it that can be observed in the real world, we also covered how it differs from product design; I found it quite hard to grasp hence I’ve decided to conduct my own research to help myself have a better understanding of what they truly stand for; I feel as though it is imperative that I learn about it all in depth because I don’t want to start my placement without understanding certain terms.

What is Service Design?

Service design is all about planning and organizing everything that goes into delivering a service; like interacting with people, providing tools, and processes to ensure an easy and enjoyable use for customers. What I gathered from this is that service design is what comes after product design. Service design ensures that the product is working to its fullest potential by backing it with good customer service, this makes it so that customers needs are met in all areas.

It looks at the entire journey of a customer when using a service, they come in two distinct forms:

• Frontstage elements: What the customer sees and interacts with, such as apps, websites, or customer service representatives.
• Backstage Elements: The behind-the-scenes stuff that supports the service, like staff training, internal systems, and workflows.

What I understood from this is that frontstage is the things that customers interact with, ranging from the app interface, live chats, branding, and emails or texts; whereas the backstage elements are things that are being done behind scenes that the customer doesn’t physically interact with such as policies, technical support, order processing, software updates, and staff training to ensure that new workers know how to help customers and use systems. All these make sure that every part of a service functions efficiently.

A more easy way to put it would be the “theatre analogy” which states that:

• The audience who happen to be the customers experience the performance which can be seen as the interface.
• The actors (staff and interfaces) interact directly with the audience. this can be seen as the app/ website and customer service.
• The backstage crew that handles the lighten, sound system, changing actors’ outfits and handling any moving elements when the scene of the play changes are the the internal processing systems of service design.

How does it differ from Product Design

Both product design and service design focus on giving users a good experience. UX design is more about how someone uses a product like an app or website, this then makes it easy, clear, and enjoyable to use by considering the accessibility of the product; whereas as previously mentioned service design is about the entire journey a user has with a service, for example from searching up a product (start) on Amazon to receiving their package (finish), and even after that service design is still in effect because a customer could complain about their product or return it.

Best way to summarise it would be :

• Product Designer: They work on how the app looks, how easy it is to use, and how users find what they need. It focuses on the product and the user’s direct experience with said product.
• Service Designer: They think about the entire journey and experience of a customer by focusing on the whole system, including the people behind the scenes.

Upon research I also discovered that there are 5 fundamental principles of Service Design.

1. User-centricity