My take-aways from The Interaction Design Foundations Integrated Service Design course

Recently, I’ve taken up a few courses that the Interaction Design Foundation offer. As I work through them, I will be reflecting on my learnings. Sharing what I’m learning is my way of committing to doing so. Frank Spillers did an incredible job putting the course work together and I’d definitely recommend their courses to anyone from beginners to those looking to brush up on their skills.

Reflecting on what service design is

Reflecting on what service design is and what Service Designers do was a valuable exercise and served as a good reminder.
Defining what Service Design is and isn’t is a tricky thing and often because it seems to overlap with so many other design disciplines.

What I took away from it was:

• As service is only as good as its failure points and a Service designers responsibility is to ensure that those are identified and considered with a fair degree of accuracy (that last bit is still up in the air for me).
• Service Designers are there to ensure that a service is feasible to produce, scalable in size and financially viable.
• Communicating what the service is, what it looks like and all of the touchpoints that need to align in order to make it work smoothly.
• An integral part of a Service Designer’s role is putting all those pieces together in a way that makes sense for everyone involved. Seeing the problem, identifying the opportunities, testing ideas and laying the foundation for the service to be built and tested further.

so, is it a product or is it a service?

The interaction design foundation speaks of the value customers place on a product when it is purchased; the exchange of money for ownership or possession of a thing. When customers buy a service, they’re exchanging money for a ‘performance’. The ownership of the ‘performance’ is not exchanged.

I loved the example of Frank’s example of purchasing a cup of coffee — it really got me thinking about the services I engage with.

Buying a cup of coffee requires the exchange of money for possession over a cup of coffee but we might choose the coffee shop we go to based on a variety of other factors but for now, we’ll focus on service delivery. That is the ‘performance’ one places additional value on.

It opened up a series of questions — let’s think about something like Netflix for example. Is Netflix a product or a service? Technically, I’d argue that Netflix is a digital product but when I think about it, it’s evolved into a product as a service. You exchange money every month but you don’t actually own the content and the commitment is minimal. There are some digital theatrics and algorithms that deliver a good service experience.

Food for thought — Think about something you’ve bought recently and ask yourself: is it a product, a service or both?