Service Design in Venture-as-a-Service

Service Design (SERVD) is the application of range of established and new design tools that are used to identify, define and optimise systems, touchpoints, people’s roles and the ecologies that deliver innovative services.

The Services Sector

In the UK, there has been a massive shift in economic power from manufacturing to services in the past five decades. In 1948, British industry (including manufacturing, oil & gas extraction, and utilities) accounted for 41% of the British economy but by 2013, it was just 14%. At the same time the service sector’s share of the economy has risen from 46% to 79%. (Source: The Guardian ).

Compare the UK’s GDP from services to Europe’s where it is 72%, China has 45%, the USA 71% and worldwide it is 65%. (Source: The Economist)

 Service Design in a Venture-as-a-Model

Increasingly Service Design is being offered by business and transformation consultancies. In the past year 18 months, a number of the world’s leading consultancies have bought creative agencies and now offer Service and UX design as part of a transformation offering. For example, Accenture bought Fjord, Ernst & Young bought Seren, Kinsey bought Lunar and Boston Consulting Group bought S&C to establish BCG Digtial Ventures.

Service Thinking (Ben Reason et al) places people, networks and experiences at the core of how service designers innovate with business stakeholders and technology groups to create new and engaging services. Design Thinking works well when it is used in conjunction with Blue Ocean Strategies in the creation of new ventures. It is noteworthy that Service Design (along with experience design and strategic design) are core offerings in the major transformation groups as they shift from a service-as-a-fee model to venture-as-a-service.

 Service Design is a process of design that is customer-centric and systems orientated that is distinct from user experience design and interaction design but part of a triptych for designing in the experience economy.

As Service Design is a relatively new discipline in design, it is misunderstood and underused by many of companies while services are often poorly planned, badly designed and inefficiently implemented. There is a huge gap between the customer’s and user’s experience of engaging with a service and the organisations.

80% of companies think they offer a superior service, yet only 8% of their customers agree. (Design Council)

Although service design is growing rapidly and is increasingly recognised as an enabler of system and transformational change it lacks visibility.

I was an early adopter of service design, having recognised in the 1990s that an advanced product’s functionality and support systems were both embedded and increasingly distributed and connected through the Internet.

Organisations needed innovation that meant taking a more holistic approach that was concerned with touchpoints (products and apps), environments (retail or civic), systems (networks, eCommerce, etc.) and the organisation (people and culture).

Service Thinking emerged from Design Thinking (Kelly et al) as a way to identify and solve problems systemically in organisations. Livework’s founders Ben Reason, Chris Downs and Lars Löveren worked with IDEO before launching the first Service Design agency in London 2001.

Where to use Service Design

According to the Design Council (UK), Service Design adds significant value when applied in the one or more of the following circumstances:

1. Service design as a methodology with tools to deliver optimised offerings and experiences.

2. Service design as a people-centred process to address specific operational and organisational needs.

3. Service design as a collaborative process that requires a co-design and people focused approach.

4. Service design as a methodology optimise complex systems and interconnected ecologies to create disruptive innovation.

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Service Design Tools

As a service designer there are a range of tools that I can utilise, here are a few and for a more detailed list visit the ‘Tools’ section under ‘Services’ in peterfossic.co

ACTOR MAP

An actors map is a diagram representing the relationship of  people and stakeholder called ‘actors’ in a service ecology. It provides a systemic view of a service.  The diagram is built by identifying the actors, touchpoints and high level view of the service. The diagram is built from a specific actor and will feature other actors and touchpoints that are connected to and can influence or interact wth the actor via the service.

BLUEPRINT (SERVICE)

The service blueprint is a tool that describes the operational nature and the characteristics of the system, the actors, context, touchpoints and the interaction model that support and form the service. It is based on flows through the system and uses a standardised graphical technique that displays the process functions above and below the line of visibility from the customers viewpoint, where all the touchpoints and the back-stage processes are documented and aligned to the user experience.

EXPERIENCE PROTOTYPING

This tool involves creating objects or ‘props’ and acting out the interaction model (see above) to explore the way a proposed service concept will work. This approach is also referred to as ‘evidencing’ or ‘body storming’, where the use of models and objects representing touchpoints are to enable designers to take ideas and interact together to assess their usefulness. This process is highly iterative and use ‘rough & ready prototyping’ techniques.

For a more detailed list visit the ‘Tools’ section under ‘Services’ in peterfossic.co