Published
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8 min
Category
- Buyer's Guide
- Service Design
Buyer’s Guide: What is Digital Service Design?
Author
Aapo Mäki
Digital service design is a mindset, a process description and a set of tools. When applied, these tools create user experiences that make people smile. These smiles, in turn, help shape a brand’s overall customer experience. So what does digital service design actually include?
Some brands simply make us smile more than others. What do these favorites have in common?
The answer: good design.
It’s easy and pleasant to interact with the brand, whether it’s through a product, a service, social media, a physical store or an online platform. No matter the channel, I know I’m engaging with the same brand.
A successful brand is the sum of many well-designed elements, and the digital service is not secondary here – quite the opposite. A well-designed online experience is a key building block of the overall customer experience.
But what exactly is digital service design? UX? CX? Let’s find out!
The terms and theories of service design
Service design is a user-centered design philosophy as well as a set of tools and methods for creating user-driven and user-focused services.
Because service designers love definitions and frameworks, the field has developed its own vocabulary and a wide range of thinking tools.
Let’s look at the eight (8) most essential ones.
1. User-centered and user-driven design (also customer-centered and customer-driven)
User-centered design starts, well, with the user.
User-centered design emphasizes identifying users’ needs and placing them at the core of the design process.
User-driven design, on the other hand, actively involves people in the design process – letting them show and tell what they actually do.
2. Customer insight
Customer insight means understanding customers’ needs, wishes and everyday lives. This can be studied with qualitative methods (interviews, observation, co-creation…) or quantitative methods (analytics data, surveys…).
3. User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX)
User experience is the feeling and overall impression that arises when using a service. It includes observations, emotions, thoughts and reactions triggered during use.
Example: UX and personalization
In digital service design, the focus is on creating a user experience based on customer insight.
For example, interface personalization can be done in two ways: 1) automatically, based on user data, or 2) by giving the user control to adjust the interface themselves.
Broad and creative personalization can increase user engagement, but the method should always be based on identified customer needs.
Customer experience, in turn, is built from all the interactions a person has with a company – so-called touchpoints. Even if an online store provides a flawless user experience, the overall customer experience suffers if delivery or customer service fails.
Example: accessibility as part of the customer experience
Accessibility is a central part of a good user experience. As accessibility regulations now apply to more and more online services, accessibility is no longer just a “nice-to-have” – it’s an essential part of quality design.
Since an online service is often one of the company’s most important brand touchpoints (and one fully controlled by the company itself), careful planning ensures it becomes a powerful driver of customer experience.
4. Customer journey map
A customer journey map is a visual description of how a customer interacts with a company in different situations. It makes an intangible service visible from the customer’s perspective and is especially useful for mapping the current state.
Example: our sales journey in the B2B field
A potential customer might first see our ad on LinkedIn, then later search for us online and read our references – both on our own site and in IT industry blogs.
After this background research, they might send a request for proposal to our CEO Aapo by email.
The potential customer might also contact our existing clients – a touchpoint built on our past work, but one we can’t directly control.
5. Service concept
A service concept is a clearly documented, comprehensive description of a planned service. It answers the questions: who, why, how, and with what resources. The service concept is often one of the final deliverables in service design.
In our projects, we often call this deliverable a specification document, because we typically go into detail not only about the concept itself but also about how to actually build the service in line with it.
When analytical and creative thinking are combined, services can be designed based on real customer needs – not just executive opinions.
6. Design Thinking – Building Deep Understanding
Design thinking is a process that focuses on gaining a deep understanding of the user and challenging existing assumptions. It’s also a way of working that extends beyond the design team itself. When analytical and creative thinking are combined, services can be designed based on real customer needs – not just executive opinions.
But how does design thinking work in practice? At the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, it is summarized into five stages:
- Empathize – Understand users’ experiences, triggers, challenges, and needs.
- Define – Combine and analyze your data, and identify the problems to be solved.
- Ideate – Search for solutions outside the box, boldly and without holding back ideas.
- Prototype – Test ideas cheaply with different prototypes. In digital service design, this often means wireframes.
- Test – Let users try your product. This is not a painful step at the end of the project, but a continuous process that generates ideas for improvement.
In practice, design thinking is not a linear checklist that leads to a polished service at the end. Instead, it is an iterative process: for example, an idea that arises in the prototyping stage may require further research, redefinition, and new rounds of ideation before it’s ready to implement.
7. Double Diamonds – A Service Designer’s Best Friend
The stages of design thinking are often visualized with the double diamond model (à la British Design Council). This method breaks problem-solving into smaller parts and clarifies what is happening at each stage.
In the first diamond, information is gathered and then synthesized. The goal here is to find the problem to solve. In the second diamond, potential solutions to these problems are created and tested (for example, through prototypes). The goal is to find the right solution.
The diamond shape also illustrates two modes of thinking: divergence and convergence. In simple terms, you first open up to new ideas and perspectives, and then narrow down, focus, and make decisions. The diamond opens to the left – then closes to the right.
Each stage of the double diamond is supported by methods such as data analysis, surveys, interviews and workshops – tools we at Into-Digital also use for research, synthesis and ideation.
8. The Golden Circle Model: The theory of value proposition
TED Talk celebrity and author Simon Sinek created the Golden Circle model to explain the theory of value proposition. The circle captures three key questions: what, how, and why.
Sinek’s idea is that every company knows what they do, most know how they do it, but only a few truly understand why they do it. That’s why business and marketing should be approached from the inside out: instead of starting with what, begin with why.
In the digital service design process, the question of why opens up thinking into a broader context. Before focusing on detailed specifics (which are, of course, also important), it is essential to identify the purpose of the service being designed.
Skilled service designers and UX/UI designers combine deep customer insight with a wider understanding of trends, culture and technology.
So why is service design important?
When well executed, user-centered design creates services that are a joy to use. In short: the service solves the user’s problems.
There is some discussion in the field about whether this strong focus on users’ current needs might limit innovation – preventing the creation of new types of services that users don’t yet know they need.
To argue this, skilled service and UX/UI designers combine deep customer insight with broader trend, cultural and technological understanding.
Here are a few examples from the world of digital services:
Artificial Intelligence (technological trend)
A key customer painpoint is the need for speed and constant availability. The solution: AI-based chat or automation that serves users instantly; even if the user doesn’t actually connect their problem to AI.
The attention span of modern people (cultural phenomenon)
Articles go unread and content doesn’t engage. A designer who understands this broader cultural pattern might add a “Quick Path” feature to the interface, offering AI-generated summaries of the most essential content based on search terms.
Security and privacy (technological understanding)
The designer’s job is to build trust even before concerns arise.
Sustainability and responsibility (trend and cultural awareness)
The user may not specifically ask about carbon footprint, but they appreciate when the service makes responsible choices easy. A designer understands that many modern consumers want simple everyday decisions to have a positive impact.
At the core of all this is understanding; both for the familiar solutions, and for the new and bold ones.
Good design and digital service design create a unified brand experience, recognizing the online service as a key touchpoint with the brand.
The outcome can be services and solutions that users never thought to ask for – but which meet their needs when delivered at the right moment.
And if anything makes a user smile, it’s that.
