Product & Service Design (Key Differences And Best Practices)

Imagine you are on the design team for a new product and tasked with creating a product that will effectively meet customer needs and preferences. You probably start by gathering information to define the goals and specifications to ensure you’re creating the right product for your target audience. Soon, you realize that this product will be part of a system, and there’s also a good chance it will have some digital interface. As you dig deeper into the research, you must consider service design to ensure a smooth user experience. What started as a straightforward product design process is now a complex endeavor. This scenario illustrates how product and service design go hand-in-hand, as there’s often a need to establish a clear connection between the two. This article will offer valuable insights to help you achieve your goals, such as learning about key differences and best product and service design practices.

NUMI's product design can help you achieve your objectives by streamlining the product design process so you can better understand the interactions between products and services.

Key Differences Between Product & Service Design

Product design is the process of ideating, developing, and refining products that meet specific market needs and solve user problems. Product design is typically handled by both product managers and product designers.

• Product managers will create a product development strategy.
• Product designers will lead design teams to translate product features into great user experiences through testing and iterations.

This level of development, testing, and iteration helps create products that delight customers by:

• Defining product and business goals
• Anticipating market opportunities and user needs

You may also see product design called “industrial design." Generally industrial design relates to physical products and product design relates to digital products like websites and apps.

What is Service Design? 

Most organizations are centered around products and delivery channels. Many of the organizations’ resources (time, budget, logistics) are spent on customer-facing outputs, and the internal processes (including the experience of the organization’s employees) are overlooked; service design focuses on these internal processes. 

Service Design

Planning and organizing a business’s resources (people, props, and processes) to improve the employee’s experience directly and indirectly the customer’s experience. Imagine a restaurant with various employees: 

• Hosts
• Servers
• Busboys
• Chefs

Service design focuses on how the restaurant operates and delivers the food it promises, from:

• Sourcing and receiving ingredients
• On-boarding new chefs
• Server-chef communication regarding a diner’s allergies

Each moving part plays a role in the food that arrives on the diner’s plate, even though it is not directly part of their experience. Service design can be mapped using a service blueprint.   

Key Differences Between Product Design and Service Design

Product and service design aim to create meaningful user experiences, but they approach this goal uniquely. Product design is all about creating physical or digital products—think apps, devices, or tools—meant to fulfill specific user needs or solve problems directly. It involves focusing on aspects like:

• Usability
• Functionality
• Aesthetics 

Designers handle everything from prototyping to testing and iterating, ultimately crafting a solution that can be held, used, or interacted with tangibly.

Holistic Approach to Service Design

Service design prioritizes shaping the overall user experience of a service, often an intangible series of touchpoints or interactions. Service design views a service holistically, considering every component, such as:

• The people involved
• Processes
• Communication channels

It’s about ensuring every user interaction with a service is smooth and consistent. This often means mapping out each step of a customer’s journey to identify pain points or opportunities for delight.

The Intersection of Product and Service Design

While product design and service design seem distinct, they are complementary. Often, products are just one component within a service ecosystem, and combining product design’s focus on tangible solutions with service design’s user journey approach can lead to an enriched, holistic experience. By integrating both, designers can:

• Craft solutions that solve specific problems
• Enhance user satisfaction
• Build stronger relationships between users and businesses.

5 Stages Of Product Design

1. Empathize: Getting to Know Your Users

Product design is fundamentally about solving problems for real people. This is why the first stage of the product design process is all about research—and more specifically, getting to know your users. During the empathize stage, product teams conduct research to:

• Uncover their users
• What they want
• Any pain points or problems that the product can solve

This product design phase is crucial for ensuring that the final product will meet the target audience's needs. The more time you spend understanding your users and their challenges, the more effective your design will be. Activities commonly performed during the empathize stage include:

• Desk research
• User interviews
• Creating user personas and more

2. Define: Articulating the Problem

Once you understand your users and their needs, the next step in the product design process is to define the problem. This is a pivotal phase where the groundwork for the entire project is laid. The findings from the first stage are used to give crucial shape and direction to a product idea. Stage two is a critical bridge between ideation and execution with:

• Strategic thinking
• Visual representation
• A deep understanding of the customer journey
• A compelling value proposition
• Clear product definitions

3. Ideate: Develop Potential Solutions

Now that you know more about your users and what they need, you can ideate various ways to solve your users' problems. This stage aims to generate many ideas to help inform your product design. Some of the techniques that can help teams brainstorm potential solutions include:

• Mind mapping
• Storyboarding
• SCAMPER and more 

4. Prototype: Build a Working Model

Using the solutions from the ideation phase a prototype (or multiple prototypes) will be built for testing. Prototypes give you tangible evidence that you’re on track (or not) and can reveal new insights. This is when abstract ideas and concepts are transformed into tangible, interactive representations of the final product. 

It’s when the design truly comes to life. Prototypes (scaled-down versions of the final product based on solutions identified in the ideate stage) are a critical bridge between design and development. They allow for user testing and refinement before building the final product.

5. Test: Validate Your Designs

Here’s when you refer back to the users to make sure your designs are working as they had planned. This leads back to the design and product refinement ideation phase until it is just right. As you’d expect, testing means your product designs are put to the test. This is crucial for validating design decisions and ensuring the final product meets user needs and expectations. Evaluation can happen through:

• Usability testing
• Analytics
• Quantitative metrics

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7 Stages Of Service Design

1. Framing: Defining Your Goals & Objectives

Framing focuses on defining the goals and objectives of the service design project. 

• What are you trying to achieve? 
• What will success look like? 

This initial stage is crucial for setting the direction of your service design project. Outlining a clear plan will help your team stay focused and on track as you progress through the design process. 

2. User Insights: Researching Your Users

The next stage of service design is all about the users. Service design takes a human-centered approach to creating better services. This means that before you jump to any solutions, you need to understand:

• Who your users are
• What they want
• How they interact with your service

To do this, you can conduct several different user research methods, such as:

• Surveys
• Interviews
• User shadowing

3. Personas: Creating Archetypes for Your Users

Once you complete your user research, you will have gathered a wealth of information about your users. You need to make sense of this data to inform your service design. One of the best ways to do this is by creating user personas. A persona is a fictional character that embodies the traits of a specific segment of your user population. 

There are several benefits to developing user personas as part of the service design process. 

• They help you to recognize that various individuals have different demands, behaviors, and assumptions. 
• They also help you to identify with the individual you’re designing for. 

Creating a service for everyone creates a service for no one! User personas help you generate ideas and create experiences that appeal to a specific target group. 

4. Ideation: Generating Ideas for Your New Service

Now that you clearly understand your users and their needs, it’s time for the fun part—coming up with ideas for your new and improved service! Start by looking at the information in the research phase: What ideas/hypotheses have emerged that are worth exploring further? Working in a group and spending time on this section pays off. 

Having thinking time is underrated. Another common failure is to study the competition. Don’t study the competition. Study the winners in other industries and draw ideas from various sources. 

5. Service Blueprint: Creating a Detailed Plan for Your New Service

The service blueprint is a strategy used initially for service design and advancement but has additionally found applications in identifying problems with operational effectiveness. The method was first described by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank exec, in the Harvard Business Review in 1984. A service blueprint is different from a customer journey map. A blueprint works on the business back-end on how a service works, how it will be delivered, and where it fits into the customer experience. 

6. Prototype and Test: Validating Your Service Design

Validate with prototyping and be aware of biases that might be introduced into this part of the project. Different factors affect the prototypes: 

• People (not limited to the customer, including yourself, the business owner, and staff)
• Location
• Timing

Have a list of what to observe and what is essential to gather in the testing. The main priority is getting out there and trying things out. 

7. Implement

The last stage of the service design process is implementation. This is when you roll out your new service design and use it in the real world. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the process is over. It’s vital to continue monitoring your service and improving even after implementation.

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Why Is Product & Service Design Important?

Investing in product and service design attracts customers and helps businesses make more money. According to research from McKinsey, organizations that prioritize design generate 32% more revenue and 56% more shareholder returns, on average. So why does good product and service design matter? 

Simply put, it affects all aspects of the customer experience. In turn, customer experience impacts how buyers perceive brands. Customers who enjoy a positive buying experience are more likely to continue purchasing from the company—and may even recommend it to others. 

Customer Needs: Evolution and Design

Markets evolve, and so do customer needs and expectations. Design or redesign helps ensure that a product or service continues to meet customers' shifting needs. Consider the changes in consumer preferences over the last few years. 

The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and the push for social distancing have changed how people interact with businesses, particularly retail stores. Design can help products and services adapt to these new customer preferences and better meet their expectations. 

Technological Advancements: Stay Competitive

Rapid technological changes can render products or services obsolete. Design or redesign enables an organization to leverage new technologies and stay competitive. For instance, let’s say you’re a business that sells home appliances. If you don’t redesign your products to incorporate the latest smart technology, consumers will purchase competing appliances that do. 

Competition: Differentiate Offerings 

A competitive marketplace may demand the design or redesign of products or services to differentiate an organization’s offerings from its rivals. Consider the smartphone industry. 

Each year, companies like Apple and Samsung release new devices with upgraded designs and features to attract buyers. Customers' preferences change from one model to the next. To capture sales, businesses must respond to these demands or risk losing out to the competition. 

Efficiency and Cost: Save Resources 

Designing or redesigning can lead to more efficient production processes, cost savings, and environmental sustainability. In 2020, McKinsey published a report about how companies can improve their financial performance after the COVID-19 pandemic. Invest in product and service design, which can help businesses create more efficient offerings that reduce costs and conserve resources.

6 Best Practices For Product & Service Design

1. Deep User Research and Empathy

Successful designs require thoroughly understanding users’ needs, preferences, and pain points. To build an empathetic foundation for your design process, conduct:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Usability tests

By immersing yourself in the user’s world, you can create products and services that resonate with users and solve real problems. 

2. Iterative Prototyping and Testing

Prototype early and often to refine ideas before they reach the end user. Rapid iteration allows designers to:

• Explore multiple solutions
• Gather feedback
• Quickly make improvements

Testing prototypes with actual users helps identify usability issues and ensures the final product or service functions smoothly in real-world scenarios. 

3. Cross-Functional Collaboration

Effective product and service design is a collaborative effort involving teams like engineering, marketing, and customer support. Early collaboration with these stakeholders can:

• Align everyone on goals
• Ensure design feasibility
• Create a cohesive experience that integrates every facet of the user journey

4. Consistency Across Touchpoints

For seamless service design, it’s essential that each interaction point, whether digital or physical, is cohesive in messaging, tone, and style. This consistency fosters familiarity, builds trust, and enhances the user experience by providing a unified journey across the product or service lifecycle. 

5. Flexibility and Scalability

Markets and user needs can evolve rapidly, so flexible design is crucial. Whether it’s allowing customization options in a product or creating a service model that can:

• Adapt to new customer demands
• Scalable designs stay relevant longer
• Adapt as your user base or industry changes

6. Continuous Improvement and Feedback Loops

Post-launch, gather user feedback regularly to uncover areas for improvement. Analyze metrics to refine your designs continually like:

• Usage patterns
• User satisfaction
• Feedback channels

By staying engaged with users even after a product or service has launched, you can keep improving the experience and maintain a strong relationship with your audience.

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