Although excellence should accompany any product or service you decide to purchase or offer, it is not always so. As a matter of fact it’s still hard to find good service in any field. One powerful aspect that designers can overlook is the concept of “serving others” with their design pieces.

All too often a designer can believe their work is done after they have finished mocking up a final product. While this may be the case in regards to the physical artefact, we need to examine the before and after of the final product offering.

Service Design is defined as “A holistic, and complete way for a business to gain a comprehensive, empathetic understanding of the customer’s needs.”
So if service design is the empathetic presentation of a delivered service, how can we as designers ensure that we are delivering a great service through our design artefacts?  Believe it or not, a product is still a service. A good way of explaining this concept is to picture yourself needing a design that you yourself can’t do. You are totally swamped with work and have no time to complete some of the designs that are required to getting the project done on time. So you decide to outsource your work. You call up another design firm to off-load some work to them to allow you to focus on the deadlines of previous work. After a few day have passed, you recieve nothing from the design firm. You send a few emails to the design firm to which you receive no response. You call a few times and no one answers. Another day passes by with no response. You are now officially late in delivering your deliverables to the client. The client calls you up and begins to ream you out and now you feel like a failure. Finally, someone from the design firm calls you and states “Sorry for the delay. I had to take the day off this week, and one of the other designers that I gave the work to got sick…but don’t worry, we’ll have it for you by the end of day, you know how life can get sometimes.”

How would this make you feel?

The feeling you would be experiencing that very moment is the very definition of service design. You mouth would have dropped to the floor and you would be livid. You had a deadline to meet and not only is the client angry with you, not only is your reputation at stake, not only are you now over budget, but you have just received a carefree shot to the face from a designer who takes a laid back approach to projects.

People are generally selfish and self-centered. From the time we are born, the world revolves around us. More often then not, we have to go through an experience of some sort to better relate to someone who is going through the exact same experience. This is the very definition of empathy. If we have not experienced a situation that our clients are experiencing, but yet try to relate, well then we can only have sympathy.

Service design is becoming your client. You must take yourself out from your comfort spot, and lay yourself down for the needs of your client. From the very first time you lay eyes on a prospective client, that’s when the service begins. And that’s not to say that your design service ends when you deliver the final product. You service never really ends to tell you the truth, however, in practical terms, your service design only ends when you have received feedback from the client and have taken every step necessary to learn from constructive criticism, and make all iterations that are asked of you. Even then, a follow up call to the client would be the nail in the coffin. Give you clients a call in about a week. Send them a card or a gift basket, let them know that you are thinking about them and that you are interested in post-servicing capabilities. Only people who care make the decision to go through the trenches with their clients.

In all honesty, great service doesn’t begin or end with service design tactics. True service comes from your daily actions. If you want to become a service design expert, consider some of these thoughts:

1. How do I treat my spouse?

2. How do I treat my neighbour?

3. How do I interact with strangers?

4. Am I arrogant?

5. What words come out of my mouth on a daily basis?

6. Am I cliquish?

7. Do I purposely exclude others?

8. Do I respect people the same way I want people to respect me?

9. What goes through my mind when a homeless person asks me for money?

10. Do people really like me?

The sad fact of the matter is that we need an industry called “Service Design” because it is not in our nature to naturally be considerate of others.

A great site for service design references is Design for Service.

By the way, the Japanese word Samurai literally means “To serve.” So if you want to look tough and carry a sword, learn to serve