The application of service design in the early exploration of products.

Tiannan Zhao at UXDX Community: Streamlining Service and Accessibility Design for Product Exploration and Workflow Optimization in Enterprises. Video: https://youtu.be/LaE3OfoFizI

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introduction and background

[00:00:00] Tiannan: I'm going to just jump in. Welcome everyone, and thank you for being here today with me to discuss the application of service design in the early exploration for the product. First I want to quickly run through a bit about what we're going to cover today. First I will give a bit of background about myself, and then follow a story about two coffee shops to tell why service design is needed and what service design is. And then I will walk through a case study in which we used service design to approach a challenging project.

[00:00:29] Let me jump to myself a bit. I'm a product designer with a background in service design and product management. I currently work as a UX-focused product designer with Burberry. I graduated a few years ago, and I graduated from service design. After that I joined a few different agencies, and then I moved into a B2B SaaS startup as the second designer of that team. After a while being there, an opportunity came up and I moved to this more established team. That's myself and my journey in product design.

The story of two coffee shops

[00:01:25] First of all, I want to share a story. The thing I was always being asked about is what service design is, and I was thinking about that for a while. I found a really lovely story from Marco [?]. He used one example about two coffee shops to illustrate the point of what service design is and how service design applies in the early exploration.

[00:02:00] Imagine we've got two coffee shops near each other. They're offering exactly the same coffee at a similar price, so everything's similar. Coffee shop A decides, okay, we want to win, so we make a strategy decision that we want to develop a mobile app. They hired a dedicated team to work on this app for a couple of months, and then on the final launch date customers downloaded the app. But in the end customers realized it seemed to lack those essential features they wanted to have. We can say there is a gap between the expectation from customers and the business. Customers were disappointed about the app, and then they decided to leave this app.

[00:03:00] Now we look at coffee shop B. Coffee shop B already cares about their customers from the heart. First they talk to their customers. After a comprehensive study, coffee shop B really understands what their customers do before, during and after the coffee. They map out a customer journey, and from this customer journey they can see the ups and downs of the experience during the whole process. Then they identified a few service opportunities from it.

[00:03:44] Coffee shop B doesn't stop there. They also speak to other people around this business. For example, they talk to the colleagues who really work in the coffee shop to understand what their daily life looks like. They talk to marketing and suppliers as well. They really want to bring everyone together, and then they can run a workshop, or a series of workshops, to identify what the business objectives are and how they can really achieve them. That sounds like a really different approach.

[00:04:25] From there, after they do all that research, they find a few ideas, and then they test the ideas with their customers. They don't directly jump into development. They also want to first write down, or map out, a blueprint to say what else they may need. Instead of just building an app, what kind of support system should they also look at? In the end they can draft out a North Star vision board, and this North Star vision board can really lead them to say what kind of features this mobile app should have, and also what kind of backstage services they should pay more attention to.

[00:05:25] As output, customers can snag their favorite coffee, and the team also figured out, on the backstage, that they could need a more simple tablet app to place orders. The payment system might be too old. And even for more physical things like training, they realize, oh wait, we need training to show our team how to work more effectively. They even look at their own space to say we want to build a better version of this whole space. Why I want to say this is that when we talk about service design, or when you want to improve a business, it's not just about the app. It's always about a whole comprehensive service.

Three principles and the right order of logic

[00:06:21] In conclusion, coffee shop B demonstrates the three key principles for service design. First, it's customer-centric. You put the customer right at the core of your whole service. We really want to hear what kind of things customers really love and what they really need from this app. Second is collaboration. It's all about exploring and designing the concept together with the whole team, ensuring the service is not only technically feasible but also makes good business sense. Last is being holistic: building an interconnected experience that resonates with people emotionally.

[00:07:30] When you've got these three things together, that can ensure your service can go beyond just an initial thought. If we wrap it up, we would say service design is what makes people not just walk into shop B instead of shop A; it's also the reason why you keep coming back to this shop and tell all your friends about it.

[00:07:56] From this story, I'd also like to point out that when we design a digital product, there should be a right order of logic. What I mean is that sometimes people directly jump into building outputs, I mean an app, right away. But if you really step back, you will see you probably need service design to understand the whole business as a first step, and then start planning what you would like to do as outputs.

[00:08:32] Then, if we talk about building a brand new service, we would like to ask: where should we start? What are the right research methods we want to choose? There are so many different ways you can do research, and that's the moment the designer should have the sense of what the right research method is for this project. Imagine the same design research for a B2B product could be quite different from B2C. Sometimes you more need to see how users use the web, or the app performance; on other sides you may more need to see the basic operation. That's what I mean: when you design something brand new, it's quite important to really see what the right research method is.

The case study: a new last-mile delivery model

[00:09:43] For a showcase, I would like to share a real case I did in my past work. The reason why is I think this case defines why service design is important in the early exploration better than other work I did. This is a food supply chain project. Food supply chains are, what to say, complicated, so how to really understand the business was a big challenge at the beginning for someone like me, a designer who doesn't really know supply chain too much.

[00:10:26] What's this project? Let's go through a bit of detail. Collective Food is a sustainable food delivery supply chain. A bit of background about how people normally do last-mile delivery in the food supply chain, to summarize: the traditional way to do last-mile delivery is we've got a huge vehicle bringing everything from the warehouse to each individual customer. The issue could be that this vehicle is hard to move around in busy traffic during the daytime, and it's hard to plan the route for each customer.

[00:11:27] Sometimes, because of those challenges, it will result in late deliveries, or the food temperature goes wrong too much, and then the customer wouldn't really want to take the order. That's from the customer or business side. An additional point is that all those large vehicles contribute quite a significant carbon footprint, and that's also something we really try to improve.

[00:12:05] Collective Food offered a brand new service, a very innovative last-mile delivery model. What this model is: at night we have a big vehicle bringing everything from the warehouse to a few key stations we locate in central London. For example, we've got one in the east, we've got one in the north. All the food will be loaded into the station during the night. The next day, in the morning, cargo bikes or smaller vehicles come to pick up the orders assigned to them.

[00:12:52] This way it offers us much more flexibility and also saves costs, and the most important thing is we can hit the delivery window and also reduce the carbon footprint. It was something brand new to the market, something nobody had done before.

Getting everyone on the same page with a blueprint

[00:13:17] I guess it sounds quite complicated already. When we talked to each team, we realized each team had a different perspective, or different things they thought were important. So how to get everyone on the same page about what the whole service is was the first step we needed to do. As a designer myself, I cannot really become an engineer or an industry expert in a few days or a few months. What I think is important is for the designer to recognize the team's expertise in their area. The kind of support the designer needs to offer is to provide the connection between each department, and then offer a solution or a platform that's easy to use for everyone.

[00:14:27] To ensure that everyone could understand this whole service, this new delivery model, on the same page, we decided we would create an ideal service blueprint first. From this diagram we should be able to see the entire service process and what kind of physical operations it includes, so not just those screens we're going to design in our software, our management system. Following that, we discuss which departments will handle which parts, which team member, and what their responsibility is.

[00:15:15] We're not only looking at our internal resources. We also care about the people who work with us: what kind of third parties are involved, what their APIs are, and how we can make sure everything goes smoothly on their side as well.

[00:15:36] At first it was all about quite a lot of meetings and talking a lot with each team to understand their priorities. We found each team has their own focus. Each team has their own idea about how we can bring this brand new delivery model to life. So it was important to balance the interests of all the stakeholders.

Shadowing sessions

[00:16:21] After we got those ideas, all this information from our colleagues, the next thing we did was shadowing. We got a lot of valuable information, and then we really wanted to take a step back and look at the day-to-day work of each team, to really understand what their work looks like. We also wanted to see if there's any optimization opportunity they may not have realized, because they have been doing these tasks every day.

[00:17:10] From there, what we did is, for example, we would go visit our clients with the product manager team. We would visit our station to see how delivery men pick up stuff from our station, or at night how the warehouse staff load and unload product in the station. Also in the office we have other teams like operations or the finance team. We also wanted to shadow how they work, and see how we can link everything together.

[00:17:51] From those shadowing sessions we heard interesting stories, things we wouldn't know if we didn't go to the client sites. Some clients may still have concerns about the station. The reason is they probably think that if we didn't deliver food directly from the warehouse, they may have concerns about the quality. That was something we didn't really think about before, because for us it's just a different way to deliver. But some customers may have concerns, and then they might not really accept the post station delivery method.

[00:18:39] We also got some challenges from the station. When we were there, we noticed that sometimes there is a queue for drivers to pick up the order, because currently we only have one keyboard to open all the doors of this whole container. Another thing: one order could be quite heavy, and when we're loading, or when we divide the order, we need to make sure one person can take the stuff out of the door. Every time we visit the site we come across new insights, interesting things we wouldn't realize if we weren't there.

[00:19:30] I think going to talk to people and also visiting all those stations, doing those shadowing sessions, was the most enjoyable, fun part. Next, we took all the information back. That's the time we can put everything back into this blueprint and make this blueprint ready.

The completed blueprint

[00:19:59] In this blueprint we're able to see the whole process, which team and which member will work on it, and which software they're going to use, I mean internal software. Sometimes I will even put what kind of action they will do in the system. This follows the timeline, so you will see, for example, first day and then second day. On the side I will also put some insights that relate to other things, not in the flow but somehow in the flow. For example, what's the maximum capacity for our cargo bikes, what's the capacity for each door, and what is the best way to place those small containers, the order containers, in the door.

Automating step by step

[00:21:07] From there, we think, okay, there are lots and lots of things we can do. This diagram is really good, but the process itself is still complicated. Our goal is how to automate some part of it to make our people's lives easier. The first thing we need to figure out is where we want to start with this automation. We decided that identifying the task or process that can be most easily automated is where we want to start.

[00:21:52] At the very beginning, we may just want to, for example, be able to assign orders to different third parties, and be able to tell which order is going to go through the post station and which order will be delivered directly from the warehouse. The automation process needs to be approached step by step. Once we introduce any new feature, it's essential to get user feedback and test whether the new feature is useful and whether it's the right approach for our staff.

[00:22:39] What we try to avoid in this process is making any sweeping changes all at once. Because we had the concern that if we did everything at once, later on, due to some technical solution limitation, our solution might need to be redesigned from the very beginning, and that's going to be time-consuming for us.

[00:23:07] Overall, in this solution design process, we concluded three key principles. First, maintain the communication and transparency with the whole team, so we talk to the team quite often. Second, make people feel it's co-created, so each department can feel ownership of the solution; they are the key part of the whole design solution process. Finally, we really try to avoid any rushed decision in making something quite comprehensive. We want to do things step by step. Every decision we make has to be signed off by each leadership, to make sure it won't block other departments.

[00:24:16] After those small features are finished, we tick off those boxes one by one. Then those small features combine and work together, and we make this automation service complete. As I mentioned, what was quite important for us was maintaining transparency in the whole process. We check in with each team during the entire design process. We also hold demo days to celebrate each small feature we delivered to the team. It's also the moment where we make sure everyone knows what new feature is coming and how those features can really benefit their lives.

Results and summary

[00:25:12] At the end of this project, or I mean the first phase, we got about 30% of our orders delivered through this model. That was a big achievement for our sustainable development project. It was also a brand new delivery method for this entire country, so we are really proud of this project.

[00:25:41] Finally, I just want to look back and summarize the three main actions we took in this exploration journey. Make sure everyone is on the same page. You, as a designer or as a solution provider, go there and see what's really happening. And finally, don't rush to make any comprehensive solution; we can do things step by step. That's my sharing today. Thank you.

Q&A

[00:26:18] Host: Fantastic, thank you so much, Tiannan. I have a few questions, but I'll message you afterwards to maybe get them answered on LinkedIn, because we only have two minutes. I really like the summary, the message of this from a starting perspective: it's very human-intensive first. People think that you almost have to try and get a lot of automated process involved, but the message that I hear from you is start with surveys and interviews and talking to people, getting your team involved, getting their feedback on what they know. It may not be what some enterprise-level people would call best practice, but it's the reality of so many brands and so many companies out there, so I love that reality check. Start manual first and then build out from there. In terms of your process flow, what graphic design tool did you use to map that out?

[00:27:21] Tiannan: If you mean the software we normally use: Figma might have a whiteboard now, but during that time we used Miro a lot, and I guess many service designers love Miro a lot. It was an amazing tool.

[00:27:45] Host: Fantastic. Just one more question I have time for, and I'll pick it out: what are the next steps for you in terms of early adoption of service design?

[00:28:01] Tiannan: I think the blueprint is never just one blueprint. It could be expanded. If you want to go into detail on one specific moment, you can get another blueprint, or a service journey map for a specific stage. And your service map could be, after the current stage, what's the journey after this journey. You can always go wider or you can go deeper, so I think both could be the next step.

[00:28:45] Host: Great, that's fantastic. Thank you so much again, that was really great, and I really appreciate your insights on everything. We will talk to you again soon.