After climbing the industry ladder into a management role, Elle felt an urge to step back into design practice. Find out how the Service Design: Elevate course is helping Elle approach her role with newfound creativity and optimise the accessibility of a university’s student services.

Can you tell us about your career and how it led to Service Design?

I took a TAFE course in the early 1990s, which covered film, television, multimedia and graphic design. When I graduated in 1995, the web was starting to become a big thing and I was working in graphic and interface design, producing interactive content. By 1999, I had moved into a leadership role as a Digital Creative Director.

After the dot-com bust, I set up my own digital interactive and graphic design company in Perth. We completed projects for advertising agencies and companies who were starting to embrace digital. This included award winning work for a number of premium wineries in the Margaret River Region and co-founding a web2.0 startup. Once I had kids I changed my priorities and left the start-up life. Instead, I started working at digital agencies in project management and client account management.

From 2013-2020, I held a managerial role at a university which focussed on digital transformation to improve the accessibility of student services. I managed a talented team that developed and maintained front-line peer-to-peer support services and a large portfolio of digital products, from portals and apps to social media.

About a year ago, I found myself at a crossroads and realised that I could continue with management, or return to design practice. I decided to step back into design, but the industry had radically changed since I’d been involved creatively. To bring myself back up to speed, I decided to take a post-grad degree in design, which gave me a big picture understanding of current design theory.

Throughout my study, Service Design leapt out as something I’d really enjoy working with - I wanted to get into that problem-solving space, which would allow me to collaborate with clients, understand their needs and co-create the best possible solutions.

Elle Beaumont-Bilsby
Why did you choose to study with Academy Xi?

I was in the process of canvassing different course providers and luckily met someone at a design conference who’d studied Service Design at Academy Xi. They told me the course had been really exceptional and that they’d landed a Service Designer role shortly after graduating.

I took a close look at the course and realised it combined understanding the theory, picking up the creative tools and working on personal projects. The course content was very clearly laid out online, and I felt confident that it would allow me to bridge the practical design skills I’d developed earlier in my career with my managerial experience and the design theory I’d learned during my postgraduate study. For me, the course really hit a sweet spot, so I decided to enrol.

Did you enjoy working with your mentor?

Honestly, I can’t speak highly enough of Taiss. I’d had lots of experience with managing creative projects and shaping services, but it was so insightful to work with someone who’s had years of industry exposure.

Taiss established a really open environment that welcomed everybody’s previous experiences and personal approaches to design. They encouraged us to bring all our questions to the live sessions and test out our ideas, which created a really healthy, constructive dialogue. We had live sessions every fortnight and the team dynamic was really strong.     

The teams would sometimes hit roadblocks, but Taiss would get us all together and help us figure out what the next step should be. Taiss had this amazing ability to find the common threads that pulled together everybody’s thoughts about the direction a project should take. 

The success of the course really hinged on Taiss. Taiss made sure everything we were learning had the right scaffolding around it, which gave everybody the freedom and support to explore the possibilities of Service Design. We weren’t just passively working our way through the content and completing multiple choice tests – we were actively engaging with the theory and practice of Service Design, which took the learning to a higher level.

How did you find working with the rest of your cohort?

Everybody in the cohort encouraged and supported one another. In the first few weeks of the course, the sheer scale of Service Design suddenly dawned on the group, but Taiss reassured us that everyone goes through the same process of realisation. Ultimately, we were able to work through all the content as a group and reassure one another that though what we were learning was a bit tricky, it was something we were all capable of.

By the time we reached the final projects, we all knew how to carry out research, narrow down our ideas, possibly pivot, and manage stakeholder expectations, all while maintaining the integrity of the Service Design process.

Were you able to mobilise what you were learning in your role?

While I was studying the course I started working with another university and, similar to my previous role, was tasked with improving the accessibility of the student services. I could have provided a series of tactical deliverables, but I spoke to my line manager and secured her buy-in to approach the project through a lens of Service Design. I was able to combine the university brief with my personal project for the Academy Xi course.

By connecting real-world work to the scaffolded Service Design course content I was able to delve deeper into what was happening with the students in a front-of-house setting, as well as what was going on with the service team behind the scenes. Having a detailed map of the service proved really valuable when it came to creating a road map for planning and then enacting changes with a busy operational team.

The course is all about coming up with a service concept and then adjusting it to align with a real-world context. The work I carried out for the university was a perfect chance to put that concept into practice. Everything I learned throughout the course had an immediate impact on how I approached my work, which was a very satisfying outcome.

What have you been doing since graduation?

After I completed the course, there was an opportunity to extend the work of the project, focusing on student service accessibility but with a broader objective. I’m managing that project too, which means I’m drawing on aspects of the Service Design process day-to-day.

Even though the project is still in its early stages and nowhere near being in an end-state, I feel comfortable working with the ambiguities. The course has given me the confidence to conduct the design research to better understand complex human and systemic requirements. I also have more tools at-hand to advocate for change when working with stakeholders in a large, dynamic organisation. All this means we’ll be able to deliver some wide-scale solutions that should have a really positive impact on the student experience.

Do you have plans to do any further training?

In terms of formal learning, I don’t really have the bandwidth to commit to studying at the moment. The role I held while I completed the course had some flexibility, which meant I was able to juggle the two commitments productively. Plus, the new student services project I’ve started will definitely absorb all my time and attention.

For the time being, I’m fully focused on putting everything I picked up from my Academy Xi experience into action. Taiss was very generous in providing links to references, articles and design forums that will help us develop our careers post-graduation. The next steps for our Service Design practice were very organically seeded into the course.

In the long-term, I’m keen to add to my knowledge bank. I’m really interested in transition design and co-design, both of which are really pushing boundaries in the industry.

If I do decide to take another digital skills course, I’ll definitely look closely at Academy Xi. Judging by the Service Design course, I’m confident it would be a great investment and give me a really practical, job-ready skill-set.

Would you recommend Academy Xi to anyone contemplating enrolling?

Absolutely! The course content was intuitive to work through and Taiss was not only deeply knowledgeable in the field, but also completely supportive of any questions I had. 

My classmates had such diverse backgrounds and it was really inspiring to see how they applied their interpretation of Service Design in the context of different projects. It demonstrated Service Design’s adaptability and the variety of solutions it can bring about. 

The course was a great opportunity to meet other design professionals, and I really enjoyed taking those all-important steps towards my dream career. Speaking from experience, I would definitely recommend Academy Xi to anyone who’s looking to expand their practical skills and further their career in the design industry.  

If you’re ready to redefine your career with cutting-edge Service Design skills just like Elle, check out our Service Design courses.

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Can you tell us about your career and why you decided to upskill in Graphic Design?

I graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Media Communications and have worked in marketing ever since. Marketing was always something that I wanted to pursue, specifically copywriting, and I’ve been working as a marketing copywriter for a few years now.

I’ve had quite a few opportunities throughout my career to try my hand at graphic design, from creating adverts using Photoshop to assembling flyers with InDesign, and I’ve always really enjoyed getting that little bit of exposure.

At the moment, I’m in the communications department at Swinburne University and writing the comms and outreach for students, which also allows me to get involved in a fair bit of the graphic design work.

What appeals to me about graphic design is that it’s a logical and emotional process. It’s all about solving problems and being expressive at the same time. The end product is commercially useful, but also has artistic value, which is really pleasing.

During the lockdown I spent lots of time putting together designs with Procreate, really just for the sheer fun of it. I reached a stage whereby I realised the skills I was developing could come in handy in my role, but I wasn’t getting any feedback or critique, which meant I didn’t know whether or not my work was improving. In the end, there’s only so much you can learn by watching YouTube tutorials!

I needed experienced eyes on my designs, and wanted to bring some theory to my creative process, which is why I decided to take a course in graphic design.

Other courses can be quite demanding - you need to get to a certain place at a certain time, which gets a bit stressful. With Academy Xi, all that falls to the wayside, and the course offerings are really simply shaped around teaching and learning.

Christina Peng
 
Why did you choose to study with Academy Xi?
 

I did research right across the board and looked into courses with loads of different providers. I knew I didn’t want to commit a year of full-time study to a diploma. I needed something that wouldn’t take over my life for too long, and Academy Xi offered the most condensed option on the market.

Academy Xi has a really good reputation, especially for UX, so I was well aware of your brand. I looked at the course structure and content and decided it was a good fit for what I wanted to be able to do as a graphic designer. Plus, it helped that the course is very reasonably priced, especially given it’s completely interactive.

Kerry was my main point of contact in your sales team and she sent me examples of previous students’ work. I was really excited by the prospect of learning to design at that level and decided to get onboard. Academy Xi has regular intakes, so I was able to start just a couple of weeks later.

One of Christina’s digital artworks.
Did the course live up to your expectations?

It really did. I was made to feel completely welcome from the start. It was a relatively small, tight-knit cohort and everyone was really supportive. All my coursemates were passionate about graphic design, cared about their work deeply and were more than happy to share their ideas. We learned a huge amount from each other.

We completed practical assignments every week and worked through a whole heap of briefs, using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. It felt like we were constantly picking up new skills, or working with new tools and platforms. I really appreciated that we were always encouraged to put our twist on things and develop our own style.

We submitted a total of three major assessments, one at the end of each four week block and had the choice of either producing personal projects, or responding to briefs that our mentor, Paul, had worked on in the past. I chose to work on personal projects, but also used Paul’s briefs to practise.

By the end of the course, I was more than comfortable interpreting a brief, making decisions based on design theory and confidently pitching my concepts.

How did you find working with Paul?

Paul did his absolute best to give everyone the guidance they needed and create a team environment. Online learning poses its own challenges, but Academy Xi has put everything into place to make the course a really engaging experience.

As well as the live session, the cohort stayed connected with the course Slack channel and Paul encouraged us all to give each other feedback on our submissions. It was really useful to have visibility of everyone’s work in real-time, which helped us set the benchmark and draw inspiration from one another. Ultimately, it was Paul who made the course as fulfilling as it was.

Paul’s already achieved so much in the industry, he walks the walk and talks the talk. It was reassuring to know that all of Paul’s feedback was backed-up by proven expertise. At the same time, he had an eye for the individual needs of all the students.

What was the most important skill that you developed during the course?

Without a doubt, it’s having the ability to apply design principles to my work, rather than just creating designs based on a feeling of what does or doesn’t look good.

My design process is no longer guided by personal biases, which means I’ve replaced subjectivity with objectivity. I have the knowledge needed to step back, examine my own work and make objective decisions.

When I’m looking at websites and contemplating how they’ve been constructed, I can actually pinpoint which principle they’ve applied to each section, or even when they haven’t applied a principle properly and the design is lacking something.

As well as the intrinsic benefit of enhancing my own work, the course has given me the ability to think critically about design work in general.

In my spare time I’m now designing greeting cards and selling them on Etsy. I'm also starting to create digital art using the skills I developed throughout the course. Having Paul as a mentor really opened my eyes to the fact that everyone has a gift, and that our gifts can be nurtured and put to really good uses.

Christina Peng
 
What has the course enabled you to do in your role?

I’ve made myself known as the person who is ready and willing to take on more design tasks. These days, about 20% of my role is dedicated to graphic design and I’ve become a lot faster at completing the work. The course has left me able to make quick, confident decisions.

I’ve got a longstanding background in UX writing. Initially, I wasn’t sure how UX writing and graphic design would fit together, but actually they’re completely intertwined. When you read an asset, you don’t just read it as a slab of text. The visual elements that surround the writing and the visual qualities of the text itself are all instrumental in shaping the reader’s experience.

Now, when I’m producing marketing material or email communications, I’m far more conscious of how to visually structure the asset for maximum impact and the reader’s comfort. Blending an understanding of writing and graphic design has really improved the standard of the content I produce.

Beyond my work, I’ve also been able to coach my colleagues. I give them 101 training in InDesign, showing them that it’s not this big, scary thing! It’s really satisfying to pass along my skills. Setting up my coworkers with the right tools not only makes their jobs easier, but also protects the quality of the collateral we deliver as a team.

In my spare time I’m now designing greeting cards and selling them on Etsy. I’m also starting to create digital art using the skills I developed throughout the course. Having Paul as a mentor really opened my eyes to the fact that everyone has a gift, and that our gifts can be nurtured and put to really good uses.

Would you recommend Academy Xi?

I would, absolutely. For me, Academy Xi’s main point of difference is that you understand how busy the everyday person is. It’s possible to complete Academy Xi courses while living a very full and busy life.

I’m 33, working full-time, have a mortgage to pay and a whole load of other commitments. Not only was I able to complete the course, but it was flexible enough for me to work it around my schedule and really get the most out of the whole experience.

Other courses can be quite demanding – you need to get to a certain place at a certain time, which gets a bit stressful. With Academy Xi, all that falls to the wayside, and the course offerings are really simply shaped around teaching and learning.

What advice would you give to someone interested in the course?

For anyone interested in the Graphic Design: Elevate course specifically, I’d say it offers a good mix of self-directed and interactive training. Plus, everything you’ll need to do to complete the course is very clearly laid out at the beginning. There are no nasty surprises!

It might sound a little cliched, but the course experience ends up being what you make of it. If you enrol, make sure you fully commit to the process, give the training everything you’ve got and always keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to improve.

You might start the course thinking that you don’t have enough experience, or that the work you produce might not be up to standard, but always remember that a graphic designer can have 10 years experience and still be constantly learning. The field’s that dynamic. I asked Paul how often he has to Google something related to graphic design, and he told me “every day”.

In the end, the beauty of graphic design is that it’s always evolving and improving, which means people working in the field have endless opportunities to evolve and improve themselves. If that’s what you want out of a career and you’re drawn to the possibilities of graphic design, don’t underestimate yourself, just go for it.

For more graphic design inspiration, check out Christina’s amazing brand book project.

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Keen to carve out a career in Human-Centred Design, Simon enrolled in the Design Thinking for innovation: Elevate course. Find out how Simon’s Academy Xi experience has helped him find practical solutions for all kinds of design problems and land an exciting new role with Nous Group.

Can you tell us about your career before Academy Xi?

Until recently I’d been working as a music program manager at a charity called A Sound Life. The charity is Sydney-based and aims to build resilience and wellbeing in the lives of vulnerable people by offering free music, yoga and meditation programs.

The programs operate in hospitals, disability centres and mental health facilities and are all volunteer run. My role as a program manager entailed training volunteers in community music, connecting them with the right program and bringing on different hospitals and centres throughout Australia where we could make a difference.

Around 2019, the bushfires and pandemic meant that mental health was a widespread issue in Australia. It dawned on me that A Sound Life had the potential to take its services beyond Sydney and scale-up its impact nationally.

I knew we could only move into other parts of Australia as a result of digital transformation. To bring volunteers onboard and train them in other locations, our systems and processes would have to become digitised. I realised if I picked up some new digital skills, it would help the charity grow.

How did you end up becoming interested in Design Thinking?

Before Academy Xi, I took an IDEO Service Design course and then carried out a Service Design project with A Sound Life. The project involved rebuilding the service and implementing new digital systems and processes. The project was a real success, improving volunteer retention and allowing us to branch into other parts of Australia.

During the course I was introduced to the concept of Human-Centred Design, which I immediately fell in love with.

Truthfully, I haven’t followed a traditional professional path. Instead, I’ve been listening and responding empathetically to the needs of the people and communities I’ve encountered throughout my career. This has led me to design and deliver workshops, experiences and programs that have had a positive impact on people’s lives.

Throughout all this, something was lacking – I wanted to add more rigour to my practice and bring a bit of method to the madness! As I started digging deeper into Human-Centred Design, I knew I had found an approach that would support my empathetic and inquisitive nature, while offering more structure. It was a perfect fit, and I knew immediately that I wanted to find a role that allowed me to work with Human-Centred Design’s principles.

Why did you choose to study with Academy Xi?

The IDEO course had given me a step-by-step design process to follow, but I knew I needed a much deeper understanding of the methodologies. I researched Human-Centred Design courses, including Service Design, UX Design and Customer Experience, but eventually settled on Design Thinking for Innovation. I wanted to be a generalist, who could solve problems with products and services, and also plan changes at a higher level. 

An attribute that I really wanted in a course was to have a group of people I could collaborate and engage with in my timezone. Plus, I’m a facilitator in my role and wanted to be able to immediately use any skills I learned. It was important to find a course that focused on practice and applying new skills in an organisational context.

Academy Xi is Australia-based, highly collaborative and places a strong emphasis on practical experience, so it definitely ticked all the boxes for me. Because I was working with a charity at the time, I was lucky enough to be offered a scholarship, and choosing Academy Xi was ultimately an easy decision to make.

Simon Jankelson
What was your main highlight of the course?

The course mentor, Anna, was excellent. Anna was just really cool, really flexible and really smart. She had this amazing ability to go with the flow of the group, which made the live sessions so open and enjoyable. 

Anna has worked in Human-Centred Design with KPMG for a long time, and offered a real depth of knowledge and industry insight. She brought fresh thinking to every session and the whole class was in awe of her problem solving techniques. 

Anna encouraged us to question everything and always ask ‘why?’. If there were any underlying assumptions that came with solving a design problem, Anna helped us unpack them and scrutinise them very carefully.

How did you find studying online?

Honestly, I’m normally someone who likes to be out in the world and doing things in person. However, I’d have to say that online learning really does work. I loved collaborating with my coursemates – we were constantly bouncing ideas back-and-forth online. Having a group connection was very important to me, and we made that happen virtually.

It was a really fun, diverse group. One guy was in marketing with a non-profit, another was a member of a project team at Telstra, and we also had a young guy who had just started his career in construction. It was an amazing mix and we learned so much from each other.

Simon Jankelson
What Design Thinking projects did you work on?

The first project was a case study for a business card seller. Because of the lockdowns, he wasn’t selling any business cards and we had to figure out if he needed to adjust his product, or come up with an entirely new one.

I did real-world research to understand why people weren’t using business cards, and eventually came up with the solution of offering webinars that trained people in the art of Digital Marketing. The webinars covered sales calls, emails and all the touchpoints people still had with businesses. Essentially, it used online mediums to perform the same function as a business card.  

My second project was personal and I chose to work with a youth mentoring initiative that I started a few years ago with A Sound Life called Sound Mentoring. Sound Mentoring connects volunteer musicians with disadvantaged young people who might not have access to music equipment, music lessons and recording studios. It helps young people amplify their potential, achieve their music goals and grow as people too.

In preparation for the next Sound Mentoring program, I posed the question ‘How can we improve the self confidence, social connection and engagement of mentees in the sound mentoring program?’. I interviewed 15 mentors and 15 mentees, performed quantitative research with 20 mentors and 20 mentees, and created empathy maps and personas. 

When my research was completed, I uncovered that engagement was a problem, mostly because mentees were not always getting the access they wanted to software and instruments. In the end, specific training and checks were put in place to ensure that the technical setup of the mentor and mentee was compatible with the mentee’s goals.

What did you enjoy about learning Design Thinking?

For me, Design Thinking is a process for dealing with ambiguity, questions and problems. I don’t think that it really ever professes to reach an exact answer, but it helps you to get much closer to solutions that work.

If you were designing a pen, you would take into account the wants and needs of your customer segments, but then if you zoomed back, you might also take environmental considerations into account. There are all these different stakeholders that you could aim to create solutions for, but Design Thinking helps you make rational decisions about whose problems you’re going to address.

Design thinking now seems to be evolving consciously, taking into account a range of stakeholders such as the environment, communities and the planet as a whole. I’m really excited about the direction the field is heading in and looking forward to playing my part.

Can you tell us about the new role you’ve landed since graduation?

Not long after the course finished I got hired as a Human-Centred Designer at Nous Group. Nous is an international management consultancy with over 500 people working across Australia, the UK and Canada. As a values-based organisation, Nous partners with leaders to shape world-class businesses, effective governments and empowered communities. 

As an Experience Design manager at Nous, I design Human-Centred products and services that really do make a huge difference for the people using them. What pleases me most is that it’s a role that allows me to follow my passion for helping others. Nous work across a broad range of sectors, such as environment, education, human services, health and many more.

Working with Nous offers endless opportunities to find projects and teams that align with my purpose of using Human-Centred Design to make a positive impact in people’s everyday lives. I’m grateful to have landed the role – Nous is recognised as Australia’s top workplace, ranking first in the 2021 Great Places to Work Awards.

Finally, would you recommend the course?

I certainly would. The Design Thinking for Innovation course has set me up for success with a full Human-Centred Design toolkit, as well as the methods, mindset and practical approaches needed to apply the principles of Human-Centred Design on the job. 

Traditionally, I’m somebody who appreciates order and struggles a little with ambiguity, which is probably why I enjoyed the Design Thinking course so much. Carl Jung said “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” I’ve found so much personal growth in using Design Thinking to deal with uncertainty and work with it in a meaningful and productive way. 

I’d definitely recommend the Academy Xi Design Thinking for innovation: Elevate course. It’s perfect for anyone getting started in Human-Centred Design, or anyone who wants to deepen their capabilities in UX, Service Design or another design related field. As well as giving me tangible skills, the course has really boosted my confidence and left me well prepared to take on all the challenges that come with my new role.

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Academy Xi Blog

Advantages and benefits of using Service Design 2023

By Academy Xi

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Service Design is now a major determinant of a brand’s survival and ability to stand out from the competition. Find out how designing services the right way can set a business up for success.

As users increasingly expect more personalised experiences, brands are now relying on Service Design to create innovative and relevant experiences for its people, partners, products, and processes.

According to Matt Kurowski, Service Designer and Co-Founder of Think5678, Service Design is the “intentional creation of valuable and impactful human experiences that create some kind of business or social value.”

Take advantage of the benefits of Service Design to stand out from the crowd. Here’s how Service Design can help your business or brand:

1. Design ideal human interactions

Utilising tools such as empathy maps and service blueprints, Service Designers are able to capture the entire end-to-end customer journey. By examining both an end user’s current experience and expectations, Service Designers are able to determine various pain points and moments of delight within a service.

There are five layers to designing for human interactions within Service Design:

  • A shift from product to service: Service Design requires a strategic shift of thinking from discrete, tangible products to a holistic and connected experience that caters to the customer.
  • Examining a product from back-end to front-end: This layer focuses on moving away from simply the end user or customer towards considering all stakeholders interested in, invested in, or influenced by a service.
  • Transitioning from consumption of a product to relationships: As the saying goes, people don’t buy a product but buy a better version of themselves. This mindset within Service Design focuses on building and nurturing sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships with customers.
  • Evolving from service to business design: From the holistic lens of a business, Service Design plays an important role in encouraging different levels of innovation within a company — whether it be incremental, adjacent, or disruptive.
  • Moving from relationships to ecologies: The Service Design ecosystem focuses on every individual or aspect involved and just as ecology is the link between an environment and its organisms, the value exchange in a service benefits everyone.

2. Consider everyone involved

Service Designers understand that delivering a great service is not only dependent on the service itself, but on the experience of people delivering that service. In this way, Service Designers aim to improve and innovate services that affect both customers and organisations.

Service Design enables companies to deliver experiences that create value for customers and allow for meaningful connections between the customer and the company. By reviewing all touchpoints and interactions that lie beneath a customer’s line of visibility, Service Design becomes the catalyst for innovation and future growth opportunities. By exploring the parts that make up an experience, businesses are able to identify opportunities for innovation from the inside, out.

Tools for understanding the different parties involved in a service include:

  • Research interviews: Talking to stakeholders to clarify the problem and define successful outcomes.
  • Stakeholder maps: A record of events’ that capture the interactions a customer has at different touchpoints of a service and helps break down the complexity of everyday interactions. Read more about Stakeholder Maps
  • User personas: An archetype or visual representation of a user trend that depicts customer behaviour and patterns. Download your free user persona template.

3. Create consistency with Service Design

The benefit of Service Design lies in its holistic process that aims to design a seamless and effortless solution for customers. Service Design ensures that the overall experience is consistent and easily understandable, with little to no friction for the customer between touchpoints.

As a core pillar of design, creating consistency in a service is about making it intuitive. By examining all the areas of a service, Service Designers aim to increase the usability and learnability of the different aspects of that service.

The main benefits of improving the consistency of a service include:

  • Eliminating confusion: The more intuitive something is, the more user-friendly it is – effectively reducing error and eliminating user frustrations and pain points.
  • Improving wastage: A consistent service is built on predefined components which facilitates efficient decision making, reduces costs and time; rather than attempting to address changes for many variations, inconsistencies, and processes.
  • Encouraging continuous learning: By means of comparison, improved consistency forges a benchmark for businesses to learn and iterate. It is much easier to compare “apples to apples” within a service than making improvements across many moving parts.

4. Service Design embraces change

One of the major reasons that 90% of startups fail is creating a product that no one wants, also known as the inability to find product-market fit. Service Design improves companies’ chances of success by keeping them agile towards the constantly evolving needs of customers and changes in technology.

A Service Design led approach can help yield higher adoption and retention rates, as well as increase customer satisfaction. This drives increased revenue and market share in a highly competitive global market.

Through activities such as research, affinity mapping, empathy mapping and constructing a service blueprint, Service Designers are able to build and ideate a solution that is not only fit-for-purpose but also addresses the end user’s core job to be done.

5. Foster creativity and collaboration

By “stepping outside of the building” and going directly to end users, Service Design brings together all players in a service, thus drastically improving the collaboration and creativity of an end solution.

By removing stakeholders’ blinkers, Service Design injects a fresh perspective, incorporating various angles into a solution that include the client, customer, stakeholders and even external factors such as the environment.

Service Design considers how technology and products intersect and consider their relationship on a larger scale, providing an overarching view that would not be possible by simply looking at the immediate problem ahead.

6. Match organisational goals with customer needs

Service Design offers businesses a chance to align their organisational goals with customer needs. Following the logic of service design, what the customer wants should directly inform the goals that a business sets for itself. 

Companies often treat the customer’s needs as an opportunity to resolve or give additional value back to an original motive for purchasing a product or service. However, customer needs can also shape a business on a much broader scale. 

The ultimate objective of Service Design is to ensure that all of a business’s people, processes, resources and values are directed toward pleasing the customer. Any business that aligns its organisational goals with customer satisfaction is ultimately setting itself up for success. 

Want to learn how to deliver unforgettable services by focusing on the customer’s needs at every touchpoint? 

You can reap the benefits of using Service Design in your business or brand with our range of Service Design courses, which come in two flexible formats (part-time and self-paced) and offer you the chance to:

  • Access a comprehensive toolkit containing all the templates and tools a Service Designer needs
  • Demonstrate your strategic skills to employers by researching and creating an actionable current and future-state Service Blueprint 
  • Put the theory of Service Design into practice by working on weekly practical activities and hands-on projects                                  
  • Choose from a range of real-world scenarios or bring your own service design problem to solve.                                 
  • Add value in any business by Identifying customer needs, creating user stories and designing company-wide approaches that create exceptional service experiences 

Want to discuss your course options? Speak to a course advisor and take your first steps into the exciting world of design.