Service design for the creative industry

What is service design?

You may have heard of service design, but what does it actually contain and how could the arts and culture industry make use of it?

Service design is a framework for development that allows creating better services based on design thinking. At the core of services is interaction in which some goods or benefit is transferred from one person to another. The benefit can be directly given by one person to another or it can be transferred digitally, for example. Design thinking is a way to view the world in design and to create solutions for it. In design, human-centric, location-centric and solution-driven approaches, visual thinking, experimenting, and using and testing prototypes are important. In service design, these are specifically used to develop services. The purpose of service design is to create services that are smooth and easy for the people using them and that meet the needs that have brought these people to the service. Today, employee experience is also often considered in service design. Employee experience is vital for producing good services.

Service design in practice

Turning the very abstract concept of a service into something concrete is at the core of service design. In practice, this is done by dismantling the service to touchpoints, or points of the service where a person using the service interacts with the party providing the service. Touchpoints can be social, meaning other people; digital, meaning different applications, websites, service robots, etc; physical, meaning spaces and space solutions; or objects such as brochures, forms or admission tickets. When customers interact with these touchpoints they experience the service, and they use this experience to assess the value and significance of the service in relation to the objectives they had when they first decided to engage with the service. Today, this experience is often shared online on different forums or social media channels. This means that the experience can spread outside the service from one person to the next by word of mouth. This is why service design is important. One of the key tools of service design is to create a visualisation of the service path. A visualisation makes the service more concrete to the person who is designing the service. A service path is the sequence of events that occurs when a person interacts with the touchpoints and which the person using the service views as the service itself.

Increasing accessibility of art with service design

Service design is important in the creative industries as well. It can be used to ensure that your target audience can find your art. It is important to understand that the aim of service design is not to create an art piece, but to create paths that lead the visitors, audience or customers to the art piece and to make accessing art easier.

Service design in the creative industries is related to making art accessible and to ensuring the public finds it, for example. If experiencing the art is associated with transactions such as buying tickets, a cup of coffee or an art piece, the transactions should be smooth and easy to make. Digital paths should be such that they make it easy for people to find their way to the art, meaning find the concert, art gallery or other event, for example. Visitors of concerts, art galleries and other events should feel safe and happy to be there – and preferably that they have experienced something good. The power of sincere human interaction is irreplaceable in service design. This means that at events, the people representing the creative industry should welcome their audience with respect and kindness and with a smile and good eye contact. Spaces where the events take place should be accessible and such that finding the art is easy and effortless. Any forms, brochures, catalogues, posters, programmes and tickets should be clear and understandable from the perspective of visual communications and they should produce additional value. One of the basic tasks of service design is to reduce any frustration or irritation of visitors and to increase and spread good feelings and contentedness by designing all of the abovementioned with a customer-driven approach.

Service design benefits all sorts of organisations. Designing good services also promotes social sustainability.

Remember these five things at least:

• People are brought to your art via a service path of some kind. Have you found the touchpoints and visualised your service path? If not, now is a good time to start.
• People must find your art in order to see and experience it, so check the digital path that leads them to your art. How easy is it to find your website and social media accounts through Google or ChatGPT? How easy is it to contact you through these or make the decision to purchase your art?
• With services, we often falsely think that service paths are easy for everyone if they are clear to those who created them. What about the people who you want to find your art? Have you reviewed your service path by interviewing them? You can learn a lot about improving your service path if you discuss it with just one of the people that could benefit from experiencing your art.
• To ensure a service experience is as memorable as possible, you must know what the people coming to experience your art are looking to gain from it. Have taken a moment to think about who your audience, viewers or listeners are? What are they looking to gain for their everyday lives through your art? When you know the everyday needs of people, you can include messages related to them in your communications and marketing.
• Queues and waiting that people see as unnecessary almost always cause irritation and frustration, so find the points where your audience must queue or wait. Could you respond to emails or social media messages faster or could to set automatic responses that inform people when you will have time to respond to them? Could you provide some entertainment or coffee for people queueing to your event to turn standing in the queue a positive experience?

Want to learn more? Read Tarja Pääjoki’s and Oona Tikkaoja’s guide ‘Taide palvelee – soveltavan taiteen palvelumuotoilu’ [Art serves – service design in applied arts].