Service Design: Elevate
Online
12 weeks, part-time
Course overview
Organisations are increasingly focusing on crafting superior service experiences, with a massive third of customers saying they would leave a brand they love after just one poor service experience (PwC, Experience is Everything – 2018).
Service Designers aim to create seamless and efficient service experiences. They holistically look at omnichannel customer interactions with your brand. This also involves organising behind-the-scenes resources that enable your service to be delivered – your employees, processes and systems.
Complement your professional expertise and elevate your career with in-demand Service Design skills. This online course will set you up for success with a ‘ready-to-go’ Service Design toolkit for you to immediately create sustainable solutions and optimal experiences.
Industry-relevant content:
- Premium material built in-house by experienced learning designers, guided by industry experts
- 60-80 hours of course content and activities over 12 weeks
- Understand and map the end-to-end journey of a service across digital and offline channels
- Learn soft skills to effectively communicate and secure stakeholders’ buy in
- Leverage a comprehensive toolkit containing all the templates and tools needed to put Service Design principles into practice
Hands-on practical learning:
- This course is extremely hands-on, with multiple activities in each module to make sure you put theory into practice
- Perform research and put together a current- and future-state Service Blueprint to communicate your service strategy
- Walk away with a Service Design project portfolio containing a compelling set of artefacts to showcase your skills to potential employers
- Apply newly acquired Service Design skills immediately in your job
- Set your business apart from the crowd by delivering truly exceptional service experiences
A highly supported experience:
- Fortnightly mentor-led live video sessions, held after work hours to facilitate discussions, guest lectures and bring the content to life
- Two 1:1 mentor sessions for tailored support
- Entire teams dedicated to support your learning and progress
- Set deadlines to keep you motivated and on track, while allowing for flexibility in pacing your weekly activities
A social and collaborative learning environment:
- Access course content through our easy-to-use and interactive online learning platform
- Online but not alone – you’ll go through the course at the same pace as other students in your cohort. Our engaging learning platform also allows for peer engagement.
- Build your network. Grow together, share ideas and make lifelong friends with our community of passionate, like-minded individuals
Earn trusted and recognised credentials:
- On completion of this course, you can add an industry trusted digital credential to your LinkedIn profile
Course timeframe
This course takes approximately 60-80 hours over 12 weeks. This timeframe includes absorbing all of the learning materials, attending virtual live workshops, participating in 1:1 mentoring sessions, completing the course activities, developing your personal project, links to additional resources and collaborative and engaging discussions with your mentor and peers.
What you'll learn
Understand the basics of service design and its value in solving complex problems. Learn about the nuances that differentiate the closely aligned disciplines of Service Design, CX and UX.
Topics
- Understanding Service Design, Human Centred Design and the Double Diamond framework
- Service Design minds: Strategic vs creative
- Differentiating Service Design, UX and CX
- The value of Service Design: Solving complex problems
Learning Activities
- Perform desktop research for your project
Kick off your service design project that you’ll work on throughout the course. Question the brief and define the scope as the first step towards executing your project.
Topics
- Unpacking the brief: the (human) problem, business requirements & service landscape
- Using the Desirable- Viable – Feasible framework as a project guide
Learning Activities
- Create a reverse brief
- Evaluate and map relevant trends
- Design a stakeholder map
Learn about the different types of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Plan and carry out field interviews to support your project.
Topics
- Quantitative vs qualitative research
- Primary research: Interview guide and techniques
- Contextual inquiries and observations: Guerrilla research and ‘Fly On The Wall’
Learning Activities
- Conduct interviews to inform your design problem
- Capture and collect interview data
Synthesise your research and derive data-driven insights about customer motivations, needs and opportunities. This stage helps you to empathise with the customer and people involved in the service.
Topics
- Coding & organising data to find insights
- Synthesizing data using affinity maps
- Defining & aligning on the problem(s)/opportunity
- Mapping: Human needs and customer journey
Learning Activities
Prepare the following artefacts for your project:
- Affinity map
- Empathy map
- Personas
- Archetype profile
- Jobs-to-be-Done
Understand how service blueprints can empower your business to optimise service processes. Get familiar with the elements of a service blueprint and put your learning into action using a blueprint template.
Topics
- Strategic vs operational forces: Why Blueprint?
- Blueprinting as an artefact
- Analysis Frameworks: Swimlanes; Front and back of house visibility; Analysis tracking and Emotional states
- Blueprint in action: A step by step guide
Learning Activities
- Produce your own current state Service Blueprint
Use ‘How Might We’ questions and creative matrices for ideation to step beyond the obvious and generate innovative potential solutions. Develop a service hypothesis and prepare a storyboard to communicate your vision.
Topics
- Setting a future service vision and ideating towards solutions
- Alignment through workshops: ‘How Might We’
- Ideation & inspiration toolkit
- Developing a hypothesis
- Communicating ideas through Storyboarding
Learning Activities
- Write your own ‘How Might We’ questions
- Create Crazy 8s; a creative matrix; Concept cards & posters
- Generate a service hypothesis
- Prepare a storyboard
Bring your ideas to life and test their practicality with early and inexpensive prototypes. Learn about the different forms of prototypes and how to build them rapidly.
Topics
- Introduction to prototyping: Making, visualising and failing fast
- Physical vs digital prototyping
- Rapid prototyping: Building ideas into concepts
- Role play: Acting out a real world scenario
- Defending your prototype’s value proposition
Learning Activities
- Use a rapid prototype to build out your project concept
- Understand and communicate your prototype’s value proposition
Let your users experience the prototype. Build and validate hypotheses based on user feedback and prioritise features that add the most value.
Topics
- Validating hypothesis and capturing feedback
- Testing Methodologies
- Testing Frameworks: Concepts vs Features
- Usability testing
- Ruthless Prioritisation: How to prioritise following testing
Learning Activities
- Prepare a hypothesis test card
- Create a test plan
- Apply testing and prioritising tools to your project
Build a strategic roadmap for your service that includes a desirable, viable and feasible goal and the major steps or milestones needed to achieve it.
Topics
- Introduction to Roadmapping
- Blueprinting: Choosing the right template and designing the future blueprint
- Curating your own design process
- Dealing with ambiguity
- Aligning to the DVF framework: Desirable, Viable, Feasible.
Learning Activities
- Create your future-state Service Blueprint
Now that you have finalised your future-state service blueprint, learn how to communicate its vision, get stakeholder-buy in and make it a reality.
Topics
- Bringing together data and artefacts
- Building a future vision and adapting for unknowns
- Developing a compelling narrative: Storyboarding & building a deck
- What makes a great Service Design portfolio?
Learning Activities
- Create your presentation deck
- Submit your video presentation and receive feedback
Who this course is for
If you’re looking for a practical online Service Design training with mentor support and classmate collaboration, this course is for you. Our Service Design Elevate course is ideal for professionals including but not limited to:
- Anyone working in a service-oriented role like customer service, financial services, public service, etc. who wants to make better use of their organisation’s resources and improve service delivery
- Professionals working in adjacent disciplines like UX, CX or Business Design and looking to expand their skill set and boost career prospects
- Entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to set their business apart by offering exceptional service delivery
- Anyone who wants to learn practical Service Design skills that they can apply right away
Earn a digital credential
We partner with Acclaim by Credly to deliver digital credentials for our graduates. Digital credentials are a graphical representation of your skills, combined with a description of the knowledge and activities it took to earn them.
Digital badges can be used in email signatures or digital resumes, and on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
For more info, click here.
Our students work with the best
Student portfolios
Check out our students’ personal projects as they showcase what they are passionate about.
CATALINA BONAVIA, ANNEMARIE SIA & MARUF MORSHED
Our students' success stories
Academy Xi has a 4.2 score out of 5, rated by 2543 students.
“the after-care and involvement in the Academy Xi community have been wonderful”
Samantha Poling
The instructor was very experienced in Service Design and facilitated a deep understanding of the subject matter amongst a cross-section of students with varying skill levels and employment backgrounds. And most of all the instructor made it fun! I would recommend this course and Academy Xi—the staff were incredibly professional, the sign-up process was a breeze, and the after-care and involvement in the Academy Xi community have been wonderful. Thank you!
“I’ve been able to implement the knowledge I gained on the course straight into my work!”
Warren Everard
The Academy Xi Service Design course was a worthwhile experience. It has been valuable to help me understand the role of Service Design in business. I’ve been able to implement the knowledge I gained on the course straight into my work! The community of students and the teachers created a fun learning environment. Each week, there was something new to look forward to. Thank you for such a great experience!
“The course has reaffirmed my passion, confidence and capability in Service Design as the next step for me”
Sitara Ramakrishnan
Throughout my course and afterwards, I’ve been lucky enough to receive mentorship from a talented CX Designer at my work to help reach my full potential. My mentor has been instrumental in further elevating my knowledge and skillset with weekly advice and feedback to various artefacts I produced or tested with them. The course has reaffirmed my passion, confidence and capability in Service Design as the next step for me.
“It was creative, well structured and enjoyable”
Tania Wilson
I loved everything about the Service Design course I did at Academy Xi, working on a real project from start to finish. It was creative, well structured and enjoyable. As a digital professional, it has given me extra tools and frameworks to complement my work in different and interesting ways.
Suggested courses
foundations courses
Meet your instructors
Other disciplines you might be interested in
