Introduction
Service design is a new area of design that addresses many intangible aspects of public spaces. Although it can also be applied to virtual services, this article will focus on applying service design principles to physical places.
What is Service Design?
Because of its novelty, the fundamentals of service design have been put together by an interdisciplinary group of designers. These designers shared their experiences and their findings online and put together a series of guidelines dedicated to anyone practicing a service. Authors Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider compiled this information into two handbooks. The first one, This is Service Design Thinking, focuses on the fundamentals of this new design domain and teaches us how to focus on the interaction between a customer and the service provider. The second book, This is Service Design Doing, is more of a workbook, offering methods, tools and best practices for a customer centric design approach.
Service Design fundamentals
If you’re interested in developing a business offering a service, either physical or virtual, it’s important to take into account all elements involved in the client-service interaction. Here are the main categories:
Stage
The stage is the fixed context of the service. We can view this as a background, immovable. It sets the basis for any visual representation of the service provided. For physical services, the stage is obviously the space the service takes place in. Walls, floors, ceilings, steps as well as fixed furniture represent the stage of any service.
Props
Props are a distinct category from the stage. Although props participate in providing the setting for any service, participants can use them as tools. For basic public spaces, such as restaurants or cafes, props are things like chairs, movable tables, even books, board games or drawing tools. Props can partially represent a physical manifestation of the service provided. There should, however, be a distinction between props and the main service provided. Props should not upstage the service itself.
Architects and interior designers can deal with stages and props as a single category. Both represent a physical manifestation of the service provider’s identity. As such, they should be visually and conceptually cohesive. For instance, fixed furniture should be designed together with movable furniture in order to maximise the user’s comfort while also seamlessly providing a physical context for the service to take place.
Actors
I’ve mentioned “customers” as receivers of the service provided and “participants” as human presence in the public space. Service design addresses the human entities more thoroughly, labeling them as actors. This term is a consequence of understanding the service as the central element of the entire design process. As such, service providing can be understood as performative. It has a fixed stage, it has dynamic props and it has actors that bring life to the physical context. Moreover, the analogy with the performative arts helps creative professionals focus less on the physical elements and more on the performance of the service itself.
Actors are not only members of the floor staff. Actors can also be back office employees such as managers, accountants, shareholders and cleaning staff. Most importantly actors are the visitors, the customers, the participants. Actors are people present in the physical space as well as followers on social media, visitors on the website and so on. The activity of all actors shapes the service itself and gives meaning to the service provided. Without the actors, the service could not exist.
Interaction
The most powerful elements in service design are those we cannot see. These represent all the ways the actors interact not only with the service itself but with other actors as well. For physical public spaces, interaction ranges from the moment they open the door to the visual interaction with the written menu or items on display, to being able to pick them up to the way they order food and beverages. Actors interact with all four senses, with the stage, the props and each other. They can interact with the brand both physically and virtually, through online representations of the brand such as social media or an online store.
All sets of interaction are brand builders for the service provided, they cement the brand’s identity into the actors’ minds. The more seamless the interaction takes place, the better actors can focus on the outcome of the service as an experience, as memory building, and less on the mechanics of it. And that is the main objective of service design.
Subject matter
The subject matter behind any service design is, to put it bluntly, the reason for existing. Yes, there are many restaurants, cafes and bistros. Many of them lack identity and so we don’t think of visiting them more than once in a lifetime. However the really good ones are the ones offering specific products. Italian restaurants, specialty roasters and themed bistros. The subject matter should be the answer to the “What”. This is the world building behind the brand.
Why is Service Design so important?
Our post pandemic reality has seen a shift in the priorities for public spaces. We choose to go to places not only to eat or drink. We choose places because of the meaning behind them and the community generated around them.
We learn in architecture school that, when designing public spaces, the service design itself is not our problem. We as architects should be concerned with efficient space usage and do our best to keep equipment out of people’s way, while abiding by all laws and regulations regarding safety and sanitisation.
At the same time, a business owner is not necessarily expected to effectively manage a space or even be a sole investor in the service itself. If the owner has several priorities regarding the way the service is provided, they should be able to consult service design specialists regarding the minute details of the service itself. Most importantly, service design should be observed over time by a professional.
Service design is an open ended topic for any public space. It should quickly adapt itself to the needs of the actors. It should be modular, flexible, easily modifiable.
Who can be a Service Designer?
Anyone, really. As far as I am aware of, there isn’t a specific school one can go to in order to become a service designer. There are schools for hospitality, architecture schools, business schools, UX/UI courses and so on. Service design has many connections to architecture, however since the beginning of its existence it has further developed, becoming its own thing.
Service design is obviously at the intersection of many fields including design and hospitality but also psychology and even computer science. Any of these domains can be an excellent starting point for a good service designer. Most importantly, practice and observation is what makes a good service designer. Staying curious and humble in a domain that constantly changes, drastically and rapidly.
I tell my architecture students that one of the best things they can do in their professional life is find a niche. A subcategory of architecture or interior design, something they are very passionate about, even a little obsessed with. Of course, this can change over time. Working within your own niche means three things:
- You act in your Genius Zone, as dr. Gay Hendricks puts it in his book, The Genius Zone;
- You provide much more value to your customers by being very intimate to the subject;
- You develop your own rules for practicing design.
If you’d like to read more about Service Design, you can find some of my articles here.