 Service design versus design thinking. A lot of people are talking about this right now. It's confusing. I know. Are they just different names for that same thing or is there actually a meaningful difference? I think there is and I'm going to explain why in this video. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This channel is all about helping you design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. We bring you new videos every week. So if you want to level up your service design skills, make sure you click that subscribe button if you haven't done it already. Like I said, I'm all about helping you to design services that are good for people and business. And one of the challenges is to explain to people if they need design thinking or service design. Personally, I've been using the term service design since 2006 to describe what I do. But in the recent years, I've met an increasing number of people who are really excited about design thinking. People who have been part of design thinking workshops or even followed a training on this. But I never heard of service design. I think that's kind of strange and it indicates that we've created two different worlds. And that's what I want to talk about in this video. Is there a meaningful distinction between service design and design thinking? Most of all, I want to stress that this video is not intended as a semantic discussion about the definitions. I usually try to avoid those as they are rarely constructed. So this is primarily an invitation to learn about the different perspectives on this topic and I'm going to share my personal take on this in this video. Which term do you prefer to use? Leave a comment down below and let us know why. To understand how the two terms came into be, we need to go back in time a little bit. Design thinking really started to get traction around 2007 and 2008. Around that time, there were a few inspiring TED talks and the book change by design was published. And design thinking has been gaining more and more momentum since then, especially in the recent years. When we look at the history of service design, we can see that it has been described in scientific literature around 1980 already. And since 2000, it has been really gaining momentum. The momentum of service design has really picked up since around 2007 with the relaunch of the service design network and the yearly conferences that follow. Also the book This is Service Design Thinking has definitely helped to popularize the field. Now let's look at what these terms actually describe. Design thinking has been popularized by IDEO. When I have to describe what design thinking is, I usually say that it's a way to describe how designers think and work. It seems that design thinking has been invented to close the gap between business and design. Design thinking has definitely introduced a language that may design much more accessible to non-designers. I use a really simple way to describe service design. For me, it's the application of design onto service-oriented challenges. Service design deals with specific challenges and has a tailored toolbox for that. For me, it's like we have the practice of economics and the specialized field of behavioral economics. That's also the way I like to think about design and service design. So if we look at what service design and design thinking have in common, you'll see that there's a lot actually. Service design and design thinking often talk about the same attitude, approach, mindset and tools. When you search on Google for both terms and for instance look at the images, you most likely find similar things. The double diamond to describe the process and tools like personas or empathy maps. So of course this leads to the question, if there are so many similarities, why aren't we just using one of the two terms? My answer is that the only meaningful difference is that service design describes a quite specific problem space and design thinking doesn't. From my perspective, design thinking can be applied in any situation, not just service-related challenges. You can for instance see this already in design thinking being applied on social challenges, challenges that focus on sustainability or designing for policy. So for me, design thinking just describes the approach that designers take to solve problems. Now a growing number of people, including my smart colleague Marcel Spears, say that design thinking is just design. And I tend to agree with them. Let me explain. Think about this for a second. Design thinking without design doing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And when you consider that doing and thinking always go hand in hand, it makes much more sense to just talk about design instead of design thinking and design doing. Now I've got one more thing for you to think about. You might have heard about service-dominant logic. If you haven't, be sure to check out the episode with my friend Maurizio who explains this in-depth. One of the things that service-dominant logic tells us is that every business is a service business. So if we follow this logic, we could say that as soon as we start applying design onto business challenges, we're doing service design by default. Interesting isn't it? And I suspect that this is what is causing the great deal of confusion between service design and design thinking. Because a lot of the times design thinking is used within a business context. So people who are in a design thinking workshop or project for whatever that might be are very likely to be designing or redesigning a service without actually realizing that. So let's try to recap. Design thinking for me is just a language that describes how designers think and work. And as soon as you start applying design thinking, it becomes design doing. And from that moment, it makes much more sense to just talk about design instead of making the distinction between doing and thinking. And when you use design to solve service-oriented challenges, it becomes service design. I think both terms are useful. It's just important that we use them in the right context. So that is my perspective on the distinction between service design and design thinking. But I really like to know which term that you prefer to use. Service design or design thinking and why? Leave a comment down below and let's try to have an informed discussion together. If you know someone who might benefit from what we've just discussed in this video, I would really appreciate it if you share this video with them. And if this is your first time here, make sure you click that subscribe button so you won't miss any of the new videos that will be coming out. Thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.