An elderly gentleman with colourful red glasses, a silver buddhist-haircut, and refreshingly bohemian vibe in his attire caught my eye a couple of times at Ravensbourne’s lobby on the ground floor. On Thursday, October 15, 2015, I saw him standing before me paying for his order at the university’s canteen. I complimented him on his unique style and he was pleasantly surprised. “Oh, thank you. People should say such things more often to each other” he said smiling. The gentleman asked about my field and I explained that I’m taking the Service Design Innovation pathway as a Master of Design student. He said that he heard of that term before a few times on the premises but he’s not sure what it means. “It’s to think about what you want to do and how to do it” I answered. He replied jokingly, “Don’t we all?” I nodded agreeing with him and then I added, “We just take it a bit further”. We were both in a rush. We exchanged smiles and parted ways.
The reason why I put the date above is because it’s been one month since the start of my course and I realised from that encounter that I didn’t settle on a definition that I can use in my business or to professionally explain. I also realised that I don’t have a simple way of breaking down the concept of what Service Design is about to somebody who is not remotely involved in the business world. At that moment, I remembered Albert Einstein’s quote:
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.1
The first Google search result for “Service Design definition” leads you to SDN (Service Design Network). Their definition is: “Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers. The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers.” As thorough as it may be, that was 75 words. If I had said that to the gentleman I was talking to I would’ve been late to my meeting and, most likely, he would’ve lost interest half way through. People don’t talk like that one to one. As if the 75 words were not enough, SDN felt it was necessary to put a YouTube video that took professor Brigit Mager from KISD a full 62 seconds to define what Service Design is. That’s in addition to another written definition by Mager taken from her publication Design Dictionary (go to slide 343) that took pages to explain – what a great bed time story for my son Shayth.
Unsatisfied with my findings, I decided to be a ronin and come up with my own. Two days later, I can say that the following definition satisfies me for now. It might change as I change my focus, but for now, here are two versions, a longer one (21 words) and a shorter one (14 words):
“Holistically thinking about and planning services that deliver meaningful and engaging experiences to customers and profits to the service provider”; or“How to deliver meaningful and engaging experiences to customers and profits to the provider.”
As short as they are and as simple as the words may be, I still didn’t feel that they are easy to connect with in a conversation. So, here’s my verbal definition, if you will, for the next time you meet someone and asks you, “What is Service Design?” (Read it loud to see how it feels as a spoken sentence)
“You know the level of deeper thinking and careful preparation that you go through when inviting a very important guest to dinner? That’s what Service Design does for companies and their customers.”
It takes 14 seconds to casually utter the sentence above. Is it a scientifically cohesive definition? No. Is it clear enough to give someone an idea and to push the conversation forward? Absolutely, yes. If we, service designers, can’t explain what Service Design is in a way that regular people who are not design professionals (and most of them aren’t) can understand, how can we expect clients to be engaged with the concept and grant us business projects?
Albert Einstein. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 17, 2015, from: BrainyQuote.com
Comments