Getting into Service Design
Last month, we ran a session called Getting into Service Design.
It sold out within a day, with a waitlist of over 100 people and 200+ submissions of questions for the session. There was a demand!
Stephen Mccarthy (L) and Sofia Kakembo (R)
We invited two brilliant speakers. Sofia Kakembo, User Experience (UX) Researcher at Atypon and Stephen Mccarthy, Director of Product Design and User Research at Which? Sofia took us through her journey into Service Design and her approach, and Stephen talked us through how to put together portfolios and approach interviews. Sarah and Lou then talked through tips from both being service design employers in agency and Government.
We recorded the presentations
School of Good Services Tips
Here’s an overview from Lou and Sarah’s talk on getting into service design (Link to slides). We go into more detail in the video.
Don’t be afraid of calling yourself a ‘service designer’
It is complex and it's different in so many different contexts. But ultimately, no matter how much someone tells you that they are, no one is the gatekeeper for who calls themselves a service designer and who doesn't. There are many flavors of it, many different types of service design. Often what we find is when we are talking to groups of people and ask them to raise their hand if they are a service designer, very few people raise their hand. And then we ask people to raise their hand and say, if they're designing services, and then most people do. So we think this is an ongoing discussion about what service design is and what it isn't, but no one gets to decide other than you whether or not you call yourself, service designer.
Service Design doesn't only happen in service design roles
The second related point is that service design doesn't only happen in service design roles. Look out for jobs that use language like quality improvement, process re-engineering or straight up delivery roles. Whilst Service Design Jobs is a go to place to look, consider roles without the Service Design title too. Similarly with design roles, you might find that other user centered design roles give you an opportunity to think about the whole service.
Get experience making a service better (however you can) and track your impact
If you can apply service design in your current role, make some live improvements and measure the impact. If you have the ability and time to volunteer, you might be able to find somewhere else you can do this outside of your current role. Find somewhere you can make an impact.
Join a board as a trustee or elected member
Getting experience of how services work, in a full stack way, will help you to build your understanding of how they are made, run, the challenges and opportunities with them. A great place to be is at a board level. That gives you an aerial view of services and how people make decisions on what to invest in, focus on and how they are run.
Make a portfolio show what you made and what impact it had
We talked about making portfolios visual and if you can’t show something for NDA reasons, or you don’t have any images, mock it up. Use the STAR methodology as a guide to frame it. Outline the situation, define the task, detail the action taken, presenting the results. We re-released a template portfolio for people to use for laying out portfolios.
More basics included, ‘Show the thing’. What did you work on, or towards? Pictures of workshops and postits won’t grab attention as your opening pitch so talk about what product, service, thing you are working on. Of course, as Stephen talks about, you can show us behind the scenes of how you got there, what you considered but we’ve seen so many pictures of post it workshops that isn’t going to stand out.
A snapshot of documented photographs from Sarah’s early work before she got into a ‘Service Design job’
Become an avid documentor and scrap booker
Document your work. Early and often. Photograph that workshop, the context you’re working in, take a picture of that diagram, copy and save those prototypes and sketches. Capture everything because it will help you tell a story later on.
Show your interest in the world around you
A personal passion for subject matter can make the difference at interview or shine through your portfolio
Talk about your work in the open
Write a blog, make films, create speculative work. Share early and share often. Use your work as the talking point. People will be interested and it might get you noticed or lead to interesting conversations.
Go to events (where you can) and meet new people
We talked about the value of events like the Global Service Jam and in UK the Service Design Network. There are lots of local events across the globe, find them and talk to people at them when and where you can. Sofia talked about establishing a community of practice and wrote a great blog on how to do it which can help if you need to network online.
Overcome your biases by getting someone else to read a job description
Get them to tell you what experience you have and what you’d be good at. It might feel awkward but sometimes we can’t see what is right in front of us
Write your future biography
Try creative ways to imagine your future dream job. Have a go at writing your future biography to give you a vision of where you want to aim
Never tell people your existing salary if you can avoid it!
You don’t have to tell people what your salary is
Service design is hard. Look after yourself
Be kind to yourself and enjoy the work. Sometimes it can be important to take stock and find new interesting areas in your organisation to work than to move into a new role.
Questions and answers
We decided to keep the Q+A private and not record so we could speak openly as a group. Here’s some answers to some of the questions we were asked.
What’s the shape of the market now?
The Service Design Jobs Salary report is jam packed full of insights on the market at the moment so worth having a read
Do I need official qualifications? What are the best qualifications to have?
Picking a line from an earlier blog we wrote, “You don’t need a degree to be a service designer“. In fact Lou and I have actively spoke about how we find this to be uninclusive in job description requirements. We think it locks lots of talented people out from a job in service design.
However, spending time learning in all formats from university to college to self-led learning approaches gives you the time for critical thinking and developing skills you might not have the opportunity to in the workplace because of a business model you are beholden to or role / brief you have. So we’re not anti-education, we just don’t think degrees should be the yard stick for ‘qualified’
Sofia linked to Aalto’s service design course which is a good and low cost entry level course
How do I get more experience (and if I can’t volunteer / have little time at the moment?)
We respect not everyone can undertake extra curricular work. Think about what you can do where you are and you don’t need to ask for permission to do something, you can always look at another part of your business and start a small project there. Undercover of known!
How can I move into service design as a content designer?
We had many questions from different design roles on moving into service design. Our answer is to start looking at the service beyond the material you are responsible for. Look up, down, left, right and start to map the bit you’re working on, what else it connects to in your service.
What makes a service designer different from UX/user research?
We talked about the different views people have on what a service designer is and it will vary from organisation to organisation. However, our blog on what is a service designer was our take on what the role is and can be. What I’d hope is that service designers are looking front to back, end to end and thinking not only about how the overall service is designed but how to join up the delivery of it.
With over 200+ questions we’re likely to hold another session in the future. If you do want to keep up with when that gets announced, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Bluesky or Linkedin.