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Table of Contents
Services are intangible processes that represent value exchange between individuals and an organization.
CMCS, as a public government entity, coordinates many levels and types of services. Some examples include:
Each of these services has external components (outside of CMCS) and internal components (within CMCS). CMCS must coordinate and align these components like puzzle pieces to ensure the overall service runs smoothly.
The Nielsen Norman Group ****defines service design as follows:
Service design is the activity of planning and organizing a business’s resources (people, props, and processes) in order to (1) directly improve the employee’s experience, and (2) indirectly, the customer’s experience.
So, service design encompasses a holistic perspective. It addresses not only the physical aspects of a service but also the interactions, touchpoints, and emotional aspects of the user journey. As this article ****points out, “It is a method for designing experiences that reach people through many different touch points, and that happen over time.”
Below is a video from Fjord explaining what service design is and its impact on an experience many of us interact with daily: a coffee shop.
Although this example of a business, a coffee shop, may not seem directly relevant to the government, the service design principles and methods described in this video still apply. Video credit: Fjord
Most of our work as HCD practitioners at CMCS consists of coordinating the internal components of services and products so that they meet both CMCS staff needs, as well as beneficiaries’ and external stakeholders’ needs. For example, when we are redesigning an internal tool used for policy work, we must consider the needs and pain points of the CMCS and state staff who use the tools but also the impact it will have on beneficiaries and their needs.
That’s why service design as an approach is so powerful (and very complex!). It provides us with the tools to work at different levels of zoom, accounting for both internal and external needs, to be able to align all the pieces that make a service good.