Service design

Hi. My name is Victor Udoewa, and I'm with NASA, and I'll be talking about service design.

Service design is one of many different types of design that occur at different levels. We could talk about the visual or graphic design of symbols, fonts, icons, images so iconography and typography. We could talk about the industrial design of objects such as a can opener or a computer keyboard, which could include symbols and images. We could talk about the experience design of interactions such as UX, user experience design or user interaction design. The design of human computer interactions software, which can include multiple objects and multiple symbols. We could even talk about the design of services. That could include multiple products and interactions, and touch points, and objects, and symbols, and there's a fifth level systems design. Think of a social system such as a system around affordable housing that includes multiple services and service providers, whether government services or nonprofit services or state services, etc. Now, there is no difference in the importance of these different types of design. They're all important. They all involve some type of skill and craft, some type of art, and some type of strategy, but there is an influential direction, so that the designs further to the right should influentially direct the designs further to the left. You don't want to create a beautiful software or a beautiful visual design of an image that's supposed to have an impact of getting more children housed and taken up into foster homes, and then it actually doesn't do that. So, you need a systemic strategy from the systemic design level and the service design level to influence the levels to the left. Now, within all those different types of interactions between different types of design, there are different understandings of what service design is. In fact, I've encountered five different understandings of what service design is. I'll talk about each in turn.