A human and an AI working together on a service architecture. Image created by author using Dall-E.

Introduction — How intuitive is service design?

I’ve heard many opinions about service design in recent years, and it’s quite evident that there’s a big disagreement on what service design means among members of the global design community. I believe it’s due to the nature of its abstract concepts.

Some designers with a more old-school visual design background might not consider service design as “design” at all. Meanwhile, others who were either schooled in certain parts of Europe where service design was developed since the 1990s, or by schools around the world that taught them to use design thinking to design processes and services, could easily see a lot of value in it (Look into the four orders of design by Buchanan where the design of services is mentioned).

Many of us, design professionals, are familiar with certain service design tools such as customer journey mapping, and service blueprints. However, the truth is that service design is a way of thinking that goes beyond just using these tools, and it takes time to internalize it. That can become particularly challenging if you don’t work in service design but only learn service design to apply it in your work in another design discipline, or even beyond design.

In this article, I’m discussing a customized ChatGPT I developed to help anyone who’d like to learn how to start thinking like a service designer.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d still suggest that you take a course or read a few books to learn the basics and I’ll add some suggestions at the end of this article. However, if you’re already familiar enough with service design and want a thinking partner to understand how it can be applied in practice within the context of your actual work, you’ll likely find value in continuing reading this article before you do actual work with your partners and stakeholders.

Lastly, this article is the third in a series of articles where I’ve already explored using generative AI in…