A client recently asked us a provocative question: “What are the top three things you look for in a user experience (UX) practitioner that indicate they might make a good service designer?“
Here is my answer:
- They love the research part of UX. Those UXers who got into UX, because they are people people and enjoy hearing about other people’s experiences are often service design naturals.
- They can’t help but color outside the UX lines. They keep trying to influence the context around their UX work. Once they see their first service blueprint, understand how the UX part intersects with the other touchpoints and operational components, and they realize that service designers actually get to shape these things, there is no going back.
- They love collaboration. The loner UXers who like to lock themselves in a room and go heads-down cranking on wireframes are sometimes frustrated and overwhelmed by how much collaboration service design requires. But those UXers who feel energized and inspired working on UX problems with other designers and engineers often love service design’s collaboration-intensive approach.
Of course, these three are not the only signs, but they are some of the more noticeable and reliable signs that a UXer might take to service design.
(If this sounds like you, you might want to read about some of the geekier differences between UX and service design research.)
