Increasingly, designers are approached by local and national government administrations charged with providing future welfare services as well as companies that need to think beyond the tangible product. The classic core competencies that designers command can be used to make services concrete and give them a sensory appeal.

By Anne Katrine G. Gelting  

Service design in the public sector is a complex field that involves a wide diversity of staff and users.

There is a growing emphasis on the design of services. Various types of consultants in the public sector, for example, develop plans and strategies for a service, but designers can make it concrete and give it a sensory appeal. Service designers base their work on real-life users and focus on the concrete and tangible encounter between a user or a citizen and the service. They bring the service to life by shaping the rooms, products and experiences that determine the user’s encounter with the service, the so-called touch points. Service designers are skilled at communicating and involving the relevant users and staff throughout the design process with the aid of visualisation and prototypes. Text and visual materials that clarify which services are delivered when and how are also part of the service designer’s toolkit.

As part of the effort to promote the Danish design trade, the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority (DECA) has initiated a pilot project on service design in the public sector. Municipalities and design firms have been encouraged to partner up in project groups to develop service design proposals. The design firms will receive a subsidy of up to 500,000 Danish kroner, while the municipalities are self-financed.

Service Designers’ Specific Competencies

The design firm 1508 takes part in the project on service design launched by the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority. Together with Frederiksberg Municipality they are developing action plans, a service aimed specifically at citizens with disabilities.
Mikkel Jespersen, who is a partner at 1508, explains his view of the difference between service designers and service consultants:
“Many consultants are good at doing analyses and strategies. And indeed, effective service design is based on good analyses and strategies, but a crucial element of the process is concept development and the development of specific solutions. And this is where even the more classic designers have a lot to offer. There is a need for visualisations every step of the way, as the projects often have to be presented as some sort of prototype.”
He also points out another key difference, which has to do with the approach to user involvement throughout the process.
“The classic management approach involves asking the users (in quantitative and qualitative surveys), but service design draws very much on observation and participation. The emphasis is on behaviour. This also represents a shift in perspective from tests and validation to involvement and co-creation, for example through workshops,” says Mikkel Jespersen.

Promoting the Design Profession and the Design Trade

In connection with the pilot project, DECA held a two-day workshop on service design in the public sector on 14-15 November 2007.
The Norwegian-British service design agency LiveWorks taught and chaired the workshop together with DIEC, Design Innovation Education Centre from the UK. The event offered a combination of case-based lectures and workshop sessions, where a variety of specific methods were tested in relation to various types of services in the public sector, for example a residential service for people with disabilities, a meal service for senior citizens, and the development of action plans for citizens with disabilities.  

Blueprint: Visualising the service design concept is one way of bringing all the components of a service process to life for the involved parties.

Service Design Methods

The methods applied by LiveWorks and DIEC are a mix of classic design methods and methods for user studies taken from the field of anthropology.
Prototypes are used to test and develop ideas in collaboration with service providers and users.
Service Ecology Mapping is used to map the complexity of agents, staff and users involved in a particular service.
Blueprints are used for visually describing and specifying the service process and the user’s encounter with a service through what LiveWork refers to as touch points.
A touch point can be a physical location where a user encounters a staff member. Or it can be a website where users go for information.
The methods revolve around actual users, and they involve the users when a new service is being developed. User involvement takes place through a variety of methods such as interviews or probes, where users are given instruments to record their own needs and behaviour. LiveWorks and DIEC put a high priority on evaluating service designs during and after the design process with regard to economic feasibility as well as functionality, the latter testing the degree to which users perceive the service as appropriate and useful.

Service design helps eliminate doubt and confusion for the user.

Mikkel Jespersen also points to user experiences as a key aspect of service design in contrast to the view in traditional consultancy.
“While management consultants typically focus on efficiency, for example with LEAN, a service designer’s primary concern is value through enhanced user experiences. The user’s perceived quality is enhanced, and this in turn increases loyalty, dedication, sales, etc.,” he says.

Creating Order

Service design may act as an expansion of the design field and design competencies and offer a new territory for designers to address. Government services are subject to complex legislation and provided by a wide diversity of government employees in a system that is constantly required to increase its own efficiency. Furthermore, the government sector is characterised by having a multitude of users at every age level and with varying needs; as such it is both a challenging and an important area to address. In the words of one of the participants in the DECA workshop: “In many ways, design is about creating order.”
Service design is a process and a product that helps service providers and service users navigate through complex territories in an uncomplicated, orderly and pleasant fashion. The interesting aspect is that designers have to hold onto their competencies: the ability to visualise, to maintain focus on the sensory encounter between service and user, and to empathise with the user. These capacities put designers in a position to make a unique contribution to the creation of good services.

Products become embedded in a larger network of products and services.

Service Subscribers Instead of Product Buyers

The design of services should be seen in an even wider perspective. The technological development has led to a growing number of products where the tangible object itself acts as an access platform for a range of services and, furthermore, operates in a network with other products. An iPod is a tangible platform for buying, storing and viewing/listening to films and music. Similarly, a mobile phone is less interesting without the network of mobile services it is embedded in. Thus, customers are increasingly becoming service subscribers rather than product buyers. For example, the car industry is seeking to integrate various IT-based services into the car, thus changing the relationship between buyer and car manufacturer from a matter of buying a new car every seven years to a situation where the customer subscribes to various car-related services on an ongoing basis.

Links

The Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, DECA, encourages municipalities and service designers to work together on service design in the public sector.
You can read more about the pilot projects related to service design and find contact information for DECA here.

LiveWorks was established by the Norwegian designer Lavrans Løvlie and two other partners in 2001. The firm is headquartered in London and has a smaller office in Newcastle.
The company was portrayed in the latest issue of Inform, the magazine published by the association Danish Designers, the Lounge edition/03/07. Here, interested readers can read more about the firm and its approach to service design.

The Design Innovation Education Centre, DIEC, in the north-west of England is a locally based business promotion project aimed at service design.

Birgit Mager is a professor of service design at Köln International School of Design in Germany. She gave a very interesting presentation on service design at the DECA workshop. You can read more about her and her work at www.kisd.de.

Mind Design #5, 2008