What is service design? - Front-Commerce

Service design is a discipline with a simple objective: to be functional for its user. Through a creative and collaborative approach, the creation of this innovative service based on utility, aesthetics and simplicity supports organizational agility & digital transformation.

Understanding the difference between Service Design, UX and Design Thinking:

  • Design Thinking brings together all the design disciplines and their methodologies and tools, it serves as a reference.
  • UX Design is the perception of the user experience. 
  • Service design is therefore situated between the two, it takes each part to enable the user to be best served. 

To sum up, Design Thinking is the foundation, the base from which the other disciplines draw their methods and tools. UX focuses on the user experience, what you might call the front end. Service design covers another dimension: it’s all the elements (people, processes, organization…) that must be mastered to allow the user experience to be fully satisfied. What you might call the “middle” and the “back”.

Setting up a design service

To design a service, you have to follow the Design Thinking methodology three-step plan and adapt it to your different service designs:  

WARNING: Always take into consideration the User Experience that your service provides, and the one needed by your clients.

Part 1: Start by analysing the existing design. The aim here is to establish a realistic view of the user experience.

Part 2: the second step consists of designing a Minimum Viable Product. An MVP is a minimized version of your product. The goal here is to get a maximum amount of user feedback for a minimal effort, before taking the time and energy needed to create your dream product.

Part 3: Once you’ve created your MVP, you have to put it to the test! Doing so, you can identify the key moments within the user journey, the vision and service’s target audience:  

  1. First, look into the user behaviour: analyze your needs and your customers’ needs  
  2. Then, analyze your environment and carry out a competitive assessment 
  3. Later, execute an analysis of your performance 
  4. Finally, carry out a strategic analysis. Don’t forget your digital strategy! 

And what about a digital service design?

If you’re not selling an off-line product, this article is also for you! 

Digital service design incorporates many existing areas, like web design, information architecture, user experience or content strategy. The goal is to organize all these fields of expertise to build something that not only meets the users’ expectations, but exceeds them.  Digital service design is the art of building customer experiences with a strong digital element, rather than building classic websites. It’s all about building a great service rather than having a great website. To ensure your website delivers an optimal experience, you must rely on an expert scientific & user centric approach.

Front-Commerce can help you change your online store for the better by rethinking your website technically speaking. With our PWA solution for headless commerce, we combine innovation and pragmatism to boost your conversion rate on mobile and reduce the cost of your platform. Front-Commerce natively brings an industrialized toolbox that improves the efficiency and productivity of your teams: automated tests, integrated design system, devops chain, advanced overload system…

Ready to improve your user experience and optimize conversions? Don’t hesitate to get in contact, we’d be happy to help with your project!

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