What Is Service Design?

Executive Summary

Service design is a collaborative, pragmatic approach to innovation and improvement that:

• Applies to physical and digital products, as well as intangible “services”

• Is increasingly adopted by many organizations, from start-ups to industry giants to governments; it is well known in Europe—even dominant in some sectors—and rapidly gaining traction in the US and elsewhere

• Has led to business success and shorter, cheaper projects

• Offers a common language for cross-silo collaboration

• Is similar or identical to design thinking, and compatible with Agile and Lean processes

• Is often seen in workshop formats, but is actually a way of running projects and organizations

• Uses research activities to understand problems before jumping to solutions

• Uses lightweight methods of idea generation and selection to decide “what to try next”

• Promotes low-risk progress through iterative prototyping

• Addresses the implementation of the new offering and provides for future iteration

Example Boxes

As well as project examples mentioned in the text, and the list of extensive case studies from This Is Service Design Doing (#TiSDD) listed in Chapter 2, this report contains many links to other new projects from various industries. We have asked colleagues to recommend projects they’ve found especially interesting; the selection makes no attempt to be representative. You will find the examples in small boxes marked “Recently in service design …” ...