97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 16. Implement Service Design in Your Practice

Eduardo Ortiz

During your career, you will probably work on a service, whether a new service or an existing one that you’re improving. While in either scenario the work to be performed is based on the same principles of design you’ve learned, the approach, scope, and stakeholders (including end users) are varied and different.

Let’s start by developing a common understanding: service design is the practice of identifying infrastructure, planning processes, organizing people, and implementing solutions around a service. This is the basic structure of the phases of service design:

• Research (infrastructure, policies, people)

• Plan (organize and catalog the research findings, identify pain points)

• Apply (document potential solutions into a road map, note requirements or challenges)

Research

Research is the foundation of any (service) design project; it helps us develop the knowledge necessary for us to be trusted partners in solving the identified problem. It is through research that we validate the problem and identify the different stakeholders: business owners, customers, operations personnel—anyone affected by the service. We also learn about existing infrastructure, future planned upgrades, and existing policies or rules and who they apply to.

Research provides us with a common language through which to view the challenges ...