What no one tells you about being a service designer
In the labyrinth of career choices, we regularly weigh our aptitude, preferences, earning potential, effort, and motivation. Yet, one often overlooked aspect is deciphering the day-to-day reality of a profession.
As a service designer embedded in the public sector within a consultancy, I’ve discovered nuances that often go unsaid. Here are some insights into the world of service design that might not be evident at first glance.
Service design is a social profession. Solitary tasks are a rarity and deliberately so. The collective effort serves to eliminate bias and diffuse the influence of a single person in shaping the future of user interactions. This means constant collaboration, workshops, ‘shows and tells’ and establishing ways of working with all the people involved in making the service.
The boundaries of a service design role can be blurry and undefined. What the service design practice entails is flexible, adapting to the demands of each project. At times, it may intersect with research, business analysis, or performance analysis. The scope of work could be determined by several factors — size of the team working on the service, leadership or the specific problem at hand. Comfort in navigation ambiguity is a valuable skill.
This craft requires its practitioner to zoom in and out constantly. You have to delve into the details to deliver value and consider how users are thinking, using and perceiving the touch points as they move from one step to another in the journey — Thinking deeply. At the same time, you have to consider the journey as a whole, from end to end. Consider the larger picture which includes both the physical and digital context the service sits in as well as align with the larger service goals to deliver seamlessness — Thinking widely.
Have a working understanding of backstage processes. Knowing how the front-stage aspects of the service will be realised in the backstage will be important to your success as a service designer. In the case of digital services, this could mean understanding the vocabulary and making informed enquiries with the right stakeholders. Educate yourself about how the organisation works and investigate constraints in technology, contracts or legislation.
While a service designer might be the custodian of user journeys or blueprint documents, they are not solitary contributors. Ownership of the service is shared amongst members of the team and is transferred from design to delivery teams as the development progresses. There is no reason why the service design documents shouldn’t be co-owned either. Sharing the ownership of documents will facilitate scaling the service and managing maintenance over time.
If you’re considering service design as a career or are already on the path, speak to a mentor or a service design professional to help set the expectation of what’s to come and if it is right for you.
