Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
embedded with the aim to induce good customer experiences. A designer in this context should
not be understood as someone at the end of an innovation process responsible only for the look
and feel of products, interfaces or graphical elements involved in a service process. A designer in
the context of service design rather acts as a facilitator of workgroups, who supports the workfl ow
between people with diverse backgrounds. Visual design skills as well as facilitation skills and
design management skills are key for successful service design processes. A basic prerequisite
within such a workgroup is to agree on a common way of thinking, as described by the fi ve basic
principles of service design thinking (Stickdorn and Schneider 2010).
User-centred
Services should be experienced through the customer's eyes. The inherent intention of a service
is to meet the customer's needs and, as a result, be used frequently and recommended heartily.
Thus, the user should be the centre of the design process. This requires a genuine understanding
of customers beyond mere quantitative statistics and empirical analyses of their needs. A true
understanding of their habits, culture, social context and motivation is crucial. Therefore, design
research uses mainly ethnographic methods to slip into the customer's shoes and understand
their individual service experience and its wider context. This often results in a different customer
segmentation that is based on similar patterns within customer journeys rather than demographic
and other classic segmentation criteria. Based on such insights and customer segmentation,
the user remains in the centre throughout the whole design process. Often, service design uses
Personas as a simple method to describe customer segments with empathic stereotypes.
Co-creative
All stakeholders should be included in the service design process. A customer journey includes
many touchpoints that depend on or involve various stakeholders, such as front-line staff, back-
offi ce employees and managers, as well as non-human interfaces such as vending machines or
websites. A service design process should not only actively involve customers, but also include
the most important stakeholders involved in creating and providing a service. Within such a
co-creative workgroup, designers often serve as facilitators. They consciously generate an envi-
ronment that facilitates the creation, communication and evaluation of ideas. Service design
provides a toolset to effectively design with customers and not only for them. This includes not
only the gathering of genuine user insights, but also the co-creative development of ideas, the
prototyping and testing of new service concepts, as well as their implementation in organiza-
tions. Following a co-creative approach during the design process leads to a smoother interaction
between involved stakeholders during the actual service provision. This is essential for sustainable
customer and employee satisfaction.
Sequencing
Experiences should be visualized as a sequence of interrelated touchpoints. Such a customer
journey can be visualized in different ways and analysed with various methods according to the
design focus. Unlike fl owcharts or process maps, customer journey maps emphasize this sequence
in a user-centred and empathic manner. They usually include sketched storyboards to visualize
touchpoints as almost realistic situations. Often customer journey maps provide additional
data such as an emotional journey that demonstrates which touchpoints different customer
groups perceive as positive and which ones as negative. Envisioning the dramatic arc of customer
