Comments on: Service Design: What’s Next?

By: Mike Smart

Mike Smart — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:49:28 +0000

Hello all,

I believe you may find this interesting…

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/Design-Council/1/What-we-do/Our-activities/Public-services-by-design/

By: You may already practice service design « Faint Voice

You may already practice service design « Faint Voice — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:43:11 +0000

[...] Service Design: What’s Next? | jamin.org Does this mean service design requires a different process or skills? Yes and no. As I said, if you practice interaction design in its broadest sense, know the design process well, and take a user-centered approach, service design will not be a huge leap. You may already practice service design. However, as Shelley Evenson said during the conference, additional skills she would look for in service designers are business and systems skills: the latter because services often rely on other services. [...]

By: Kip

Kip — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:16:43 +0000

I think the key thing to keep in mind is that “service design” is a variation on a theme (designing for human actions and services). The challenge will be to keep the variation flexible so that it doesn’t become a category. We have too many categories in other fields (such as medicine, law, theology) and people lose connection with how the discipline(s) came to be in the first place.

I was recently talking with my friend who is a lawyer and he said that law has become just that - lots of categories.

Design as a discipline is still too young. Perhaps what we should be talking about is how the variation on the theme can have, yet, another variation but also come back to the theme of interaction design (or design) and explore another variation.

By: Jamin

Jamin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:10:18 +0000

Nick, I agree. I think we can add having the ability to educate or communicate for training purposes is also a good skill for service designers.

In contrast to your interest in service design emerging in the public sector, I am curious about the role of service design in areas where designers do not have control over the physical environment and the service is not delivered face to face. A mobile phone service creator, for example. ;)

By: Nick Marsh

Nick Marsh — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:39:01 +0000

“I do not think service design is a distinct discipline of design. The term is important for helping to bring design into new territory.”

I do agree with this for now - at the moment service design is very much an integrative practice that draws together lots of different design disciplines - Although there are some skills that are new for designers, you mention business process understanding, and to that I’d also add approaches that suport designing directly with service users and providers and training staff.

For me, the territory that service design is operating within is the interesting bit. I’m especially interested in the emergence of public service design (by art school trained designers), an area that was not on anyone’s radar even five years ago.