Service Design for Education Part 1: Discovery Phase
This post is part of an independent study project. I am working with two professors on an ongoing research project about service design for education. My role involves developing materials for workshops where full-time, part-time and tenured educators can collaborate on curriculum development.
What I Did
Two weeks ago, I started watching Marc Stickdorn’s talk about service design. I browsed a few articles about service design to gain a basic understanding.
A few days later, I attended an event hosted by the local Service Design meetup group. There I saw presentations which explained the ecosystems of service design, including a case study related to education.
After attending the event I went back and watched the end of Stickdorn’s talk, this time feeling a deeper sense of understanding.
What I Learned
From Stickdorn’s talk, I learned a basic overview of what service design is: designing experiences with the entire end-to-end experience in mind. I also learned a few key things:
- The difference between expectations and actual experience is what causes a customer to be dissatisfied, satisfied, or delighted
- The customer journey is made up of a sequence of touch points (some controllable and some not)
- Even non-physical things such as daydreaming about your future vacation can be part of the pre-service experience
At the Service Design event, I learned about what service design means when applied to projects for companies and organizations. It’s important to look at the big picture to understand how the small part you’re designing will exist in all spaces, and how the big picture might affect your part as well.
I also learned that designers must anticipate potential perceptions from customers, both good and bad, and that users tend to interpret new services by comparing them to things they already know.
What New Questions I Have:
- Who are the customers that we are aiming to satisfy in this project? Do we have an ecosystem map?
- How might this small project affect things in the larger picture?
- How do school officials feel about the quality of students graduating from this program?
- Would it be beneficial to include students in these workshops?
