At Kainos we pride ourselves on delivering 'difficult digital', projects where we transform products and services used by millions of people. Service Design is one of the approaches we use to maximise the value we deliver for our clients. It enables us to deliver the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. We see Service Design through three lenses:
- Service Design as an approach
Service Design and design thinking provide the tools and methods to widen our field of vision and consider products as part of the wider services they operate in. Service Design enables us to answer difficult strategic questions for our clients and define appropriate and pragmatic solutions. Service Design ensures our delivery capabilities (Development, Business Analysis, Experience Design, etc) can add significant value to our clients and their users.
- Service Design as a discipline
We believe that an approach that is based on empathy, experimentation, integrative thinking, and collaboration needs a champion. That is why we have developed the role of the Service Designer to promote and ensure the principles of Service Design are embedded in our projects. Service Designers are experienced consultants with a strong User Centred Design background that share some key characteristics:
- They are comfortable with uncertainty, actually, they seek it out
- They look for possibilities rather than the one correct answer
- They love to experiment
- They know how to strike a balance between seeking opportunities and narrowing down on potential solutions
- Service Design as a process for feature discovery
This is a Kainos idiosyncrasy. On large delivery projects, we borrow Service Design methods and techniques and apply them to discovering and designing epics as part of our agile software delivery. A 'Service Design' team would typically have Business Analysts, User Researchers, Designers, and Performance Analysts working together to discover, define, and design new products and features.
As our approach matures we are beginning to look at the impact and contribution service design and user centred approaches can have to experience strategies that will help clients develop new experience models and service offering.
