You’ve probably heard some of the following words thrown around: customer journey maps, persona’s, prototyping, design springs, user research, … All very valuable aspects when it comes to digital design and growing your business. However, probably also very confusing when you aren’t very familiar with them.
Well, this blog will guide you through two different sides of digital design: Service design and UX design and help you decide what is right for your business. But spoiler alert: to create the best experience for your customers, you will need both.
What is Service Design?
In short, service design is the process of designing and improving the overall experience of services to meet the needs of customers. It is focused on identifying different touchpoints between an organisation and its customers and making sure these are optimised.
What is UX Design?
UX design is the process of designing the experience that a user has while interacting with an organisation, business, or service. It is focused on making the touchpoints as pleasant and easy as possible for customers. I.e., minimising cognitive load and reducing decision-making time.
To make things clearer, think of following example:
You need to pick up your kids from school, but also urgently need new groceries. Instead of trying to do the impossible, you decide to order groceries online to be delivered to your home.
The process behind the online grocery delivery service:
Service Design
UX Design
- Define the best way to translate the business proposition into a service / product service
- Define the needs and wants of all the stakeholders including the customer and service provider
- Define a map of the overall design system including all necessary touchpoints
- Define the connection between the different touchpoints (E.g: application, delivery, confirmation e-mail, …) with regard to efficiency, business goals, user needs, durability, etc…
- Map out the service using a service ecology, blueprint and/or user journeys
- Keep track of the micro (touchpoints) and macro (system) design process
- Define the needs and wants of the user
- Define the requirements regarding the touchpoint the user interacts with (eg. The website or app you are ordering through)
- Define worries, problems or other obstacles the user might experience
- Define the user’s goals
- Define the specific actions the user needs to do to achieve these goals
- Design wireframes accordingly to the acquired insights
- Prototype and test these wireframes for validation and/or optimisation
Overall, you could say that Service design focuses on the bigger picture, and UX design focuses on a specific context.
Can I focus on just one discipline for my business?
Preferably no. To guarantee an optimal user experience you need to think of both Service design and UX design to ensure coherence. Metaphorically put: “If service design would be a novel and UX design would be a crucial chapter in that novel, both would be unpleasant and unclear to read without the other”.
Generally, the best way to tackle your business design is to start with a Service Design trajectory where you map out your complete business and service to have a clear vision of your unique ecosystem. Afterwards, you’d dive into the UX design process by focusing on the different touchpoints from a user’s point of view.
However, if you really need to cut corners: a UX design approach would be your best bet to get your business up and running faster.
Author: Humix
