Why every designer should be a Service Designer
A brief reflection on the Service Design Seminar course from Carnegie Mellon School of Design
As the semester come to a close, I am thankful to have a moment to reflect on the crazy semester we had. This semester, I took a Service design Seminar taught by Dr. Molly Steenson and Professor Daphne Peters which changed my perception of design fundamentally. Now, I believe that having the tools and points of view of a service designer would be beneficial to anyone who wants to be a professional designer.
The notion of ‘value exchange’ and how to evaluate it
A design could be fuzzy. If we want, we can stay in that fuzzy world forever- and some do. However, if we want to make a design into a solution and apply it to the non-design world, the designer has to understand the system of value exchange. And service design lays out many tools to do that.
Service happens, in economic terms, when there is a value exchange. You give something of value and you get a value back. And service design takes this idea to the boundary merging it with the realm of design. At the beginning of the semester, we read chapters from An Introduction to Service Design: Designing the Invisible by Lara Penin. Penin expands the definition of value to the deep human condition.
As designers, we look at services primarily as human experiences, not necessarily as economic activities.
When you expand the definition of value, we can start to see how we can design the services around habit, life fulfillment, love, or community. By giving value to these fuzzy things, we can make the exchange recognizable and make them measurable.
Value Flow Diagram (VFD)
Among many service design tools that we explored in class, (such as user journey map, service blueprint, and business module canvas), the value flow diagram became a tool I use for every single design project.
VFD is a process of listing all the stakeholders and drawing out what values are getting exchanged between them. I enjoy this tool because, through this process, we can make sure that the design solution has the right balance for all the different stakeholders.
This tool is also extremely versatile. This can be used to find out business viability by showing where the funding would come from (the exact amount is the best to brainstorm through Business Model Canvas afterward) and who your partners are. Or, you can use VFD as a mission development tool- you can see what is the value exchange that is most important who is involved in that process.
For example, we used this tool to design a solution, Common Feed, that could help restaurants grow a loyal community base in the covid-19 era. We talked through where are our initial funding would come from and what would customers get out of our service. While drawing the diagram, we saw the importance of a digital system in our service. This is where all the interaction would happen, given the situation. Our design solution would benefit from a partnership with a platform such as Microsoft Teams or Instagram.
Side note: I wonder if there is an unbalanced section of the value flow diagram, this value flow diagram could surface the possible indirect stakeholders who are taken advantage of (like the issue of selling personal data).
Classroom as a service design practice
Through the class, I started to see daily interactions I had as a service. And I realized how Molly and Daphne are showing us a great example of service- relevant information in a timely manner, care for your people, and always seek feedback.
Although we transitioned to remote learning, the faculty and classmates put in so much into the class. This kept everyone motivated and pushed us to produce great final projects. I am proud of everyone’s process and outcome. I can wait to see them in person next semester.
