When we think design, we often think of the designing of products, of tangible goods. But this product-dominant way of thinking, according to designer, researcher and educator Lucy Kimbell, is about to change. Design thinking could significantly benefit services, the providing of labour and material aids needed by the public. Though it is currently a small field with little theory behind it, and though it will require a completely different way of thinking than product design, service design is gaining ground—and Kimbell and others believe it is of great importance to the future of business.
What service design is hoping to achieve is the designing of platforms for service exchanges to happen. Designers must first take into account the service’s whole “ecology”, that is, every actor and object involved in the service. Once designers understand the current state of the service, they look at what factors might demand change of the service. Finally, they decide how the service must be reconfigured in order to suit the goals of the people involved. Due to the many actors and objects involved in a service, evaluating it can prove very complex. Unlike in product design, where there are chains of value, services have “networks” of value. This means that in the service design workshops and courses that are emerging, visual webs are often used to help MBA students conceive of everything that the service entails.
The complexity and the intangibility of services have raised some doubts about just how smoothly they will translate into the field of design. After Lucy Kimbell gave her lecture on service design for the International Association of Societies of Research Design’s 4th World Conference on Design Research, an educator expressed the difficulties in assessing service design projects created by his students. Another challenge this emerging field presents was also voiced: how can we teach the design of services if traditional design education has nothing to do with services, but focuses instead on social sciences, business and engineering? Furthermore, we may have to change our perceptions about services in light of the sudden explosion of new software and information technology services. Like any other domain which is just beginning to find its footing, service design certainly does not have an easy road ahead of it.
Kimbell and others, however, have confidence in this budding discipline. Currently led by designers, it is small and taught at few institutions, but it is already having a considerable impact in the sectors of public and social innovation. Kimbell believes it will offer some great interdisciplinary opportunities for work between diverse design researchers and industries, as well as interesting connections with other fields such as business management, social sciences and anthropology. In addition, she sees service design as such an exciting field because it addresses significant contemporary questions about the ownership and access of resources, the forging of sets of relations, and temporality. Service design also bears a particular modern relevance as it addresses matters of reduction in natural resources and energy as well as the reusability of products. What’s really important now, Kimbell asserts, is that those who are taking part in service design become more action-oriented and get involved in actually re-thinking the services in their communities.