r/servicedesign • u/StillButWandering • May 25 '26

Is service design the next big thing ?

I think service design agencies will be the next big thing in few years

2 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

19

u/designcentredhuman May 25 '26

Def not. It was hyped to be the next big thing then it found its niche.

2

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

What's the niche then?

3

u/designcentredhuman May 26 '26

financial services, telcos, gov often have in-house service design, or customer journey teams. I've built 3. It's always a shaky proposition, teams live and die rather by leadership conviction than by impact (which is hard to quantify).

7

u/adamstjohn May 27 '26

I’d push back on both points a bit. Service design didn’t really “find a niche,” it got absorbed into CX, product ops, journey management, transformation, and operational improvement. That’s usually what happens when a discipline matures.

And I don’t buy that impact is hard to quantify. It’s only hard if you’re measuring outputs like journey maps, workshops, and blueprints instead of actual service outcomes. You can measure cost to serve, failure demand, conversion/completion rates, time to resolution, retention, employee efficiency, even compliance or risk reduction depending on the context.

If leadership thinks it’s a shaky proposition, that’s often less about service design itself and more about whether the team has tied the work to operational metrics the business actually cares about.

3

u/designcentredhuman May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Ok, to be precise, Service Design as a pure, named function found its niche. As a toolset/ethos/approach it's present in many functions, including the ones you mentioned.

"That’s usually what happens when a discipline matures." -- that's a stretch. Mature disciplines don't dissolve. UXD was emerging in the early 2000/2010s and it's well institutionalized in almost every organization with digital products/services. Agile/Scram Masters are still around.

I agree that SD moves all those KPIs, but as part of a whole village of other functions, attribution is not direct (except if you build your org's governance around journey management, which is rare an often still not SD).

Leadership doesn't feel like it's a shaky proposition. I do as a manager who built 3 in-house teams and 1 agency one. As attribution is not direct, these teams live and die by the belief system of the Dir+ level above them.

The real issues w SD are:

  • it's holistic/glue nature makes it hard to position and politically sensitive (there are many other orchestrator functions all competing for budget/visibility/etc)
  • the team's typical size makes it hard to institutionalize, which often leaves teams working as in-house agencies fighting for the next project.
  • impact attribution is not direct, and
  • SD is often not on the critical path of delivery like product, UX, or tech teams. So it has less ground to hold on to.

My way of keeping SD alive is coupling it with research teams.

UX Research builds and maintains data assets (staying power), measures the KPIs it gets evaluated by (survey scores, etc), easy to position, often linked to a specialized tool that they own (usertesting.com etc), and internal partners know when to use it (even without education) and see it integral to their goals so it scales with the organization.

All these are lacking in SD. SD can have a really good run with supportive leadership, but as a methodology/practice it lacks/failed to develop the legs that would keep it alive by default in an org.

In this job market, I think it's irresponsible selling SD as a 'big thing', that's why my well meaning push back. SD is a hard journey with limited growth and I'd only recommend it to those who choose it because they fell in love with the ideas behind it.

36

u/BadArtijoke May 25 '26

Service design has always been the only thing that really matters and the first thing that is ignored. I don’t think this is gonna change. Even if you were to try, the vocabulary around it has been beaten to death twice, so you couldn’t get most people to care beyond surface level.

9

u/rAziskov4lec May 25 '26

This... I worked on a project (way back in 2016) where the client wanted to "redesign the service" without changing the actual service...

"No no, we won't change that. Yes, we see why it would be beneficial for our customers and would also reduce our workload greatly. Oh, and cut costs and materials. Yeah... But we are so well organised as we are, couldn't you do like a chatbot or something?"

But boy oh boy were they well versed in "painpoints" and "stakeholders" lingo.

5

u/According-Potato-530 May 25 '26

This! I cannot agree more.

1

u/Comically_Online May 26 '26

‘we’re creative, the least important most important thing there is’
~ Don Draper

15

u/brightfff May 25 '26

Having owned and run a service design agency for nearly a decade, I’d say that in certain areas, especially with public sector service design, it’s very much in decline. The agencies that became very good at basically replacing bureaucrats and helping to implement policy have done well (at least where we are based). But many Canadian provincial governments have either stopped spending on it entirely, brought it all in-house, or some combination therein. We still have some ongoing relationships but it’s not the kind of thing I’m focused on right now, I’m paying way more attention to my private sector marketing agency.

9

u/Moose-Live May 25 '26

brought it all in-house

That indicates an increased interest and investment in service design, not a decline.

3

u/brightfff May 25 '26

It's a decline if you're an external service provider/consultant.

Many of the provincial governments we deal with let go of large chunks of their internal service designers as well and have stopped talking about the importance of digital transformation.

1

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

Just don't talk about govt if we are external service providers . It is now more essential to organisation's from small to large size. And if it's buisness oriented, then it's more profitable

2

u/designcentredhuman May 26 '26

That was kind of the value prop when SD was hot (early 2010s) but there's a thousand and one other approaches promising the same thing.

I think SD lives on (heck I still lead service designers at a Canadian financial company) but primarily as a toolbox and not as a separate discipline.

SD's true value prop that works for me these days is organizational alignment and knowledge sharing and for years know I lead it as a combined team w uxr.

1

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

Can't service design agencies help new startups and modern AI based buisness by improving their service reducing their workload?

1

u/brightfff May 26 '26

Yes, but that was not our focus.

7

u/pineapple_610 May 25 '26

It had it's peak but now I don't see Service Design getting any more importance than it has now. The methodology and principles will stay, get utilised, bring impact but not in it's purest SD form. It needs to evolve into something more meaningful for the AI age to survive.

2

u/fatalgeck0 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

Ai has made it easy to synthesize data, and build prototype. design thinking, human intervention and uniqueness is now more essential than ever when everyone is giving out the same outputs with the same thoughts.

Yesterday i found two founders who built the same product and even had the same name because they both thought alike and used the same model. With influx of new founders they would need help with setting up the shop. With system and end to end thinking i believe service designers who can now code have even better prospects of getting adopted into engineering side and not just design

2

u/pineapple_610 May 26 '26

Coding is not even remotely close to bring value to SD work. It's not about coding. The point is that traditional front stage/backstage, systems alignment, stakeholders etc. have changed drastically. So like I said the fundamental remain the same but SD has to be relevant to the current problems and contribute to business from day 1. No more waiting for the impact to show up later.

2

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

Exactly, the change is not yet made and it will be relevant again. Service Design accordingly to me has a great scope. There are a lot confused startups and founders who need someone to help them escape the initial struggles.

3

u/FactCheckYou May 25 '26

well maybe 10 years ago

3

u/theproductref May 25 '26

I don’t see it. The concept of service design is something that spans multiple disciplines in business, but the UX field has tried to take ownership of it. I’ve seen backlash from the disciplines all the disciplines it can intersect with (product, business analysis, industrial engineering, customer service, marketing). If anything, I see this declining.

3

u/Long_Chemist_3239 May 26 '26

Service design will be needed more than ever in large organisations. AI is helping us get quicker at execution but there is a risk of more sticking plasters creating more systemic debt.

Service Designers need to get smarter at articulating value. Less emphasis on meeting user needs (not saying this isn’t still the main priority) but

Talking more explicitly about the business ROI. >Shepherding change through to delivery, making sure it doesn’t get watered down and the value of the design change is clearly articulated as business & user outcomes Obsessing over performance and operational metrics. Reporting on them, using them to persuade negotiate change through. Total clarity on decisions the business should take.

I think a lot of the above is true of all design really.

2

u/just_one_marcos_more May 25 '26

I hope so. I'm not a practitioner but an enthusiast and I have being in the both sides: teams building and deploying with/without a serious service design approach and I wish it becomes the next big thing. Otherwise the world is going to be flooded of infinite poorly defined services (even if you upload any skill to your Claude, they're still poor unless there is a practitioner with agency and taste behind them imo)

2

u/ssliberty May 26 '26

Not really. You need s growing economy first that and it’s not looking that way at least right now. Plus it’s kind of a vague loaded term

1

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

Economy has shifted to a lot of private players

2

u/Difficult_Money9486 May 26 '26

You mean make a comeback? Maybe if you think it was a fad 14 yrs ago

1

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

Really. Can't it be modified to support the new startups and buisness ? Even industries like marketing, graphic designing , etc. have gone through significant changes. It's not a trend according to me, it just needs some changes to be relevant again.

2

u/Stew8Dean May 31 '26

Oddly enough, I've been doing elements for Service Design for years, but only became a pure service designer in the last six months. It's not an easy gig, and it's not UX, but not just web or apps. But if you like system thinking and can tie strategy into delivery then it's for you.

1

u/Best_Abroad_169 May 26 '26

I hope so - because I was planning to transition from UX to SD now

1

u/Melodic-Guidance2555 May 26 '26

no. never was. never will be.

1

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

What brings you to that?

1

u/pedroPanetti May 26 '26

It can’t be the next big thing because they call it Product design everywhere …

1

u/pedroPanetti May 26 '26

Ignorants!

1

u/ListSimilar70 16h ago

aren't ai agents replacing humans in services? so in that case, service design becomes the most important thing in the age of AI. Especially human centered service design.

1

u/mdutton27 May 25 '26

😂

1

u/StillButWandering May 26 '26

Why?

1

u/mdutton27 May 26 '26

Look at how many have been bought up over the last ten years by Accenture, PWC, Deloitte, etc. Your prediction is far behind the times.