Service design
Services are the means by which organisations deliver value to people. Whether we’re booking a GP appointment, paying our rent, claiming benefits, applying for housing or doing our shopping, services underpin everything we do in society.
It often takes multiple organisations to deliver a single service. These organisations are not always well-aligned. Users (both inside and outside of an organisations) can often have complex needs which may impact their chances of finding, accessing, using or delivering services successfully. When services don’t work well for someone, at best it’s frustrating, at worst it can cause harm.
Behind every service is a range of (often competing) factors, such as policies, legal considerations, processes, technologies, data, and cultures. Service designers help organisations to understand all these factors together and develop ways for services to be improved, providing better experiences and outcomes for those using and providing services.
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Services don’t exist in isolation, they are part of complex systems. Service designers think deep and look wide to transform the systems that shape our world. We do this by providing design leadership, helping organisations to redesign themselves around the services they’re trying to provide to their users. This means designing services from the outside in, adopting a mindset which takes the lead from users' needs, and balances them with organisational needs to arrive at solutions that are both useful and sustainable.
Ultimately, service design is all about people. Designing services happens best when we get together in-person. So we champion participatory and inclusive approaches to the design of our services – from the boardroom to the waiting room. Involvement from this wide range of perspectives gives us the full understanding of issues and opportunities necessary for design.
Using a broad selection of tools and collaborative approaches, we help organisations explore the future of their services and products - defining what success is, creating attainable strategies, and planning how to get there.
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Imagine designing a service for a remote medical examination. Service designers are interested in creating a flawless end-to-end experience for everyone involved; from patients, to carers, GPs, administrative staff, and hospital consultants – everyone is important in a service.
To design an amazing experience, service designers need to understand the legislative barriers, as well as the cultural, technical, and inclusion factors (to name a few) that are crucial to designing good services. This means going beyond digital to consider the holistic ways in which people interact with services. For remote medical examinations, this may mean the design of diagnosis kits that can be posted to patients, scripts for medical and administrative staff, new policies to set the vision for the service, new roles to conduct tests and interpret results and trends, and developing success metrics to ensure the new service is effective.
A good service should improve human connections, both in its delivery and its outcomes. Poor services can dissolve trust in users. Good services build trust and enhance relationships with users. Our team of designers are experts in helping organisations navigate their most complex challenges, balancing their goals with the needs of their users.
See our work in practice
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