About Ron Bronson Current: Strategic design, City of Bloomington (IN) Specialities: CMS migrations, stakeholder engagement, web governance, digital transformation. Past: Higher ed digital director. Consultant. Developer. Startup denizen. Recovering policy wonk. Likes: Loose-leaf tea, (Finnish) baseball, far-flung soccer teams & a potpourri of music genres.
What is service design? A collaborative approach to creating service experiences from the customer perspective. Focused on quality, service design helps organizations gain end-to-end understanding of their services.
“In many ways, recruitment strategies at today's institutions are the same strategies used in 1978, only complicated by a proliferation of digital tools.” - Jens Larson
HIGHER ED CONCERNS IN THE 1970S ● How do programs better market themselves? ● How do admissions professionals work with academics and administrators who don't have a marketing or enrollment background? ● How do institutions adapt to shrinking budgets, reduced demand, and market pressures? ● How do admissions officers better identify students who are likely to enroll? ● How can cross-campus marketing teams better support and coordinate recruitment efforts?
“The explosion of digital technologies over the past decade has created empowered consumers so expert in their use of tools & information they can call the shots.” -Harvard Business Review (Nov. 2015)
Service design components Frontstage employees deliver the service directly to the user. Visible to the customer. Backstage employees make everything happen in the background. Invisible to the customer. Partners service employees are other partners involved in delivering the service. For example, UPS is a partner service employee to Amazon. You may order from Amazon, but UPS plays a role in completing your service experience. Customers are actually purchasing the service, which is sometimes a different user than who is actually using the service. Users directly use the service to achieve the outcome.
Service design v. user experience ● The number of stakeholders is greater. ● A higher # and range of touchpoints. ● Touchpoints and stakeholders are broader and interact with each over time.
Why is service design relevant to me? User experience is how a user interacts with a thing. UX is everybody’s job. A service is everything that helps a user meet their need.
“Why do users or retention or revenue or click-through or likes or pages views matter? What is the value that a person will get by using your product or feature at the end of the day?” - Julie Zhuo
Artifacts gives us a way to trace the path of how decisions get made. Too often we’re so concerned with the solution that we don’t focus on what the problems are and document them. Show your work. Remember how we got here. So we don’t make the same mistakes the next time.
Service blueprint ● Customer focused ● Service experiences viewed end-to-end ● Participants & stakeholders have clear understanding of CX and provide input to improve service innovation
“Stress cases aren’t only about crisis — they apply when something mundane goes wrong, too.” Eric Meyer + Sara Wachter-Boettcher “Design for Real Life”