As a new entrepreneur approaches our team, we begin extensive research, determining their target audience and the services they provide. Here’s the exact moment when startuppers or small businesses wonder, “Why didn’t you start with the design in Figma straight away?” The answer is that if you want to build a lasting business, you need to know what your business is.
Have you seen apps that look nice and polished, but when you actually need to interact with the business, the service quality is just disappointing? For sure, these guys have found a good UI/UX design services provider for their app. But they’ve completely forgotten about service design.
In this guide, we decided to explain the difference between the two and show you why you need both to succeed.
The Difference Between Service Design and UX Design
The best way to show a difference between UI UX design services and service design is to review it in the form of a table.
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| Aspect | Service Design | UX Design Services |
| Focus | End-to-end experience of interacting with a company, including all service touchpoints (digital and physical). | User interaction with a specific product or digital interface. |
| Scope | Broad; encompasses entire service delivery, including operational processes and customer interactions. | Narrow; focuses on the usability and functionality of a specific product or interface. |
| Objective | To improve overall service quality by optimizing all aspects of service delivery. | To enhance a product by making it more user-friendly. |
| Methodology | Holistic approach considering all user touchpoints, including physical spaces and human interactions. | Research-driven, focusing on user needs and behaviors related to a digital product. |
| Outcome | Streamlined service processes that enhance the customer experience across all touchpoints. | A digital product that is easy to use. |
You have to realize the distinction between service design and UX design to understand the role of a UI/UX design services company. Let’s explore the specific processes involved in each.
What Is the UX Design Process?
A user experience (UX) design process typically involves several stages.
Research
The process begins with the identification of the problems users face. This stage involves interviews, surveys, and user behavior analysis. Therefore, UX services vendors gather insights about their needs and pain points. The goal is to understand the target audience deeply.
Define
Once the research phase is complete, designers define the design problem based on the insights gathered. At this stage, we “create” user personas, journey maps, and define user requirements. The aim is to clarify the challenges to be addressed.
Ideate
Finally, UX design service providers brainstorm and generate multiple solutions to the identified problems. This creative phase involves sketching, wireframing, and developing prototypes. The goal is to explore various design possibilities and select the most promising ones.
What Is the Service Design Process?
Service design focuses on optimizing the entire business process. Here, we mean interacting with customers through both digital and physical touchpoints.
Simplify Business Processes
Service design aims to streamline and simplify the processes that businesses use to interact with customers. This includes everything from customer service protocols to the layout of physical spaces.
Holistic Approach
Unlike UX design, service design considers all aspects of customer interaction. By this, we mean every touch point, from physical environments to human interactions. The goal here is to create a seamless and cohesive customer experience across all channels.
Why Just UX Design Is Not Enough?
While UI UX design services are critical, they alone are not sufficient for ensuring a successful business operation. The organization of any business should align with user touchpoints and interactions, optimizing processes to best suit customer needs.
A business that excels in digital interface design but neglects its overall service delivery is at risk of failure. For instance, a beautifully designed website is useless if the business fails to address customer queries promptly. Conversely, smooth business processes with a poorly designed website can also lead to failure. Businesses must strive to excel in both areas to succeed in the modern world.
Common Principles of UI/UX and Design Services
Improve overall customer experience. Both UI/UX design services and service design aim to enhance the overall customer experience, ensuring satisfaction and engagement.
Contextual design. When we encourage design with context in mind, that means the final products should be usable in various situations and across different devices.
Consistency. It should be present in every design element: colors, icons, and layout. If you aim for a cohesive and functional design, strive for consistency.
Systematic process. A systematic approach to design ensures that all aspects of the user experience are considered and addressed methodically.
KPI focus. Keeping key performance indicators (KPIs) in mind while designing helps measure the success and effectiveness of the design solutions implemented.
The Bottom Line
As you can see, creating a successful product requires balance in many aspects. In this article, we touched only on the design process, namely UI/UX design services and service design itself. To equip you fully for the meeting with your potential UI UX design agency, we’ve created a small checklist of questions to be ready for:
source: generated with DALL-E 3
Review your business and processes with this checklist to streamline the design process and get exactly what you want.
