Service Design as the Creation of Active Brand
Service design looks to me to be sitting at a point of bifurcation. The recent launch of a dedicated journal, many conferences, an almost non-stop stream of discussion on numerous blogs and social networks, and an explosion of practitioners are opening the concept to new definitions. This is somewhat inevitable, an emerging discipline tends to stake it’s ground against external boundaries initially, circling the wagons and smoothing over any internal differences. As those boundaries cement somewhat and lose the sense of urgency, the internal differences begin to articulate themselves. I understand this fragmentation as a sign of a maturing discipline, and this article is my attempt to articulate the practice as I see it.
I want to start with a note of dissent. Part of the reason for what I see as an extreme fragmentation of the service design concept is that it was never that clearly articulated to start with. Many practices and viewpoints coalesced under the banner of service as a differentiation from product. The early arguments about the validity of service design largely took the form of a reaction to product design. Within that reactionary normalisation, the word service became a catchall for a number of streams of thought and the differences between those streams weren’t always clearly articulated.
So if we are to take advantage of this moment of bifurcation to strengthen the service design concept, we need to define some of those streams. Service designers may practice one or more of these strands, even within a single project, and I’d by no means say that my definitions were comprehensive or conclusive.
The first I’d identify is the traditional service industry strand. This stream synchronises neatly with experience design and customer service to create a discourse around improving the performative aspects of services. Typical clients in this space include hotels, museums, airlines, retail environments, call centres.
The second stream is represented by what appears to be coalescing as a ‘design thinking’ movement. This movement argues that the embodied skills of the designer offer a unique set of tools for instigating and managing change. By applying these skills to organisational challenges, design can give individuals within service organisations the ability to imagine and effect change. Typical clients for this strand are change management teams in large organisations such as the NHS, banks and telecomms.
The third stream as I see it is the propositional strand. In this discourse, service is best placed to effect strategic innovation due to it’s holistic perspective and freedom from material constraints. Typical clients are innovation teams looking for game changing proposition development. I consider the word service most problematic in this domain however, because it’s precise meanings distort much of the holistic power that is promised by the abstract form. This is also the strand that I am going to concentrate on for the remainder of this article. This is primarily because it’s the strand I most commonly practice in, but also because I believe the reaction against product in this strand creates an internal contradiction with precisely the ecology of product and service that I consider service design’s most compelling feature.
With that groundwork laid, I want to argue for looking at service as a complicated and not entirely satisfactory word describing the relationship between a producer and a consumer. In this abstracted definition, service doesn’t sound a million miles away from brand in it’s most abstract sense. However brand carries plenty of ambiguous weight of it’s own, and the implications of this proposed merger need tentative exploration. What does the service concept offer that brand doesn’t?
Brand as a static concept may not shed much light on service. However, brands are increasingly not static. Service applications such as Nike Plus create an active relationship between consumers and brands. They form complex ecologies involving brand, service AND product. Here the brand becomes more than abstract, it becomes useful. With use, brand evolves into what I call active brand. Note the distinction between this and the concept of branded utility. It’s semantic I know, but the implication of slapping a logo on a function seems to do the concept a disservice.
Active brand is important, because it represents a concrete relation between producer and consumer. Each is tied to the other as long as that activity continues and must continue to contribute to that relationship. The passive brand represented by the creation, production, delivery and yes, use, of a product is replaced by a relationship that may last over numerous product lifecycles.
This ecology perspective, present from the start in service design discourse, is one that needs developing. It needs definition, clarity and focused practice. It’s the most powerful strand precisely because it effectively resolves the reaction against product within service design and establishes the grounds for a merger with brand. Service design can be seen as the creation of active brand. This confusing word Service represents an infrastructure for active brands.
Digital services have a special place in this ecology. They are a powerful platform for the creation of active brand for a number of reasons. They stretch easily over time. They are analogous to the data layer that materially constitutes the relationship between the producer and the consumer. They are easily available, both materially and financially. And they allow compelling and clear definition at the propositional level.
I’ve argued that service design is best thought of as 3 distinct strands, articulated here as Experience, Change and Proposition. The third is the least clearly defined precisely because it attempts to define itself holistically, crossing boundaries with brand. However the evolution of brand into active brand presents the opportunity for merger between service as proposition and brand.
Resolving some of the ambiguous boundary disputes with the larger brand discourse, in a way that retains an important role for service as the platform for use, can help the practice of designing services emerge from this moment of bifurcation stronger and with a clearer message of the value that it can deliver, whether it is called service design or not.
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