Your services aren’t just what you offer — they’re how your brand is experienced.
Service design =
✔️ How clients feel working with you
✔️ How smooth your process is
✔️ How confidently you deliver
A strong service ecosystem sets you apart — no ads required.
#BrandExperience #ServiceDesign

Your services aren’t just what you offer — they’re how your brand is experienced.
Service design =
✔️ How clients feel working with you
✔️ How smooth your process is
✔️ How confidently you deliver
A strong service ecosystem sets you apart — no ads required.
#BrandExperience #ServiceDesign

This is an exercise I like to run at the start of any project.

The exercise is simple; get the whole team – devs, testers, writers, designers, stakeholders, literally anyone you can round up – together, in-person or virtually, and ask the question:

Who are we willing to exclude?

#Inclusion […]

Historically, we’ve used Google Analytics to measure usage of this website.

GA has some advantages: it’s free, for a start, and it’s also the default industry standard. Even gov.uk uses it.

But it also has some, in my opinion, fairly major drawbacks.

So I’ve been thinking for some time that […]

Service Design Thursday 12th March 2026. This time up design infrastructure. Have a good rest of your week 😊🎢 @ougradsch.bsky.social #phd #design #research #psychology #servicedesign #designinfrastructure #designoperations #desops #designoperatingsystems

This link is broken

#serviceDesign #UX

https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/this-link%20/is-broken

In my experience, service design is mostly about telling – and selling – stories.

Telling the stories of people we’ve met through user research helps us make sure our UX designers and developers and content designers can update our services in ways that accommodate those needs. And mostly, that […]

Keep Going Keep Growing 🚀
#customerexperience #customerloyalty #businessgrowth #brandtrust #servicedesign #customerjourney

[customer experience; customer loyalty; business growth; brand trust; service design; customer journey]

How we improved the exporting user journey on the Scottish Enterprise website We recently redesigned the exports and international markets section of the Scottish Enterprise website. ## Our goals * **Raise awareness of our exporting expertise and support** – in order to help more businesses, we needed them to be aware of what support they can access through us * **Create content that is relevant and useful to exporters and potential exporters** – we wanted to ensure that content on our website was meeting user needs * **Get more enquiries for exporting services and events** – we wanted to get more people asking us about the services and events that we offer * **Help users self-serve** – we wanted to help people self-serve where possible, or signpost them to other help and support, at the right point in the customer journey * **Get more users taking advantage of market opportunities** – we wanted to help businesses understand what opportunities exist in overseas markets and how they can access them ## Who we worked with The project team included: * A project manager * Exporting experts from our trade services team * A service designer * A UX designer * A user researcher * A content designer * An SEO/analytics specialist ## What we did ### Start with user needs The Department of International Trade (DIT) had done a lot of research into the user needs of exporters and had shared their findings with us. This was great – but there was one problem. There were hundreds of needs. We spent some time streamlining the used needs and categorised them by theme: * **Motivation**(Why I want to export) ​ * **Information and resources**(I need information and resources to do x) ​ * **Skills**(I need to ensure I have the skills to do x) ​ * **Logistics**(I need to move stuff and people) ​ * **Compliance**(I need to comply with the law) ​ * **Risk management** (I want to know what to do if something goes wrong) ​ * **Opportunities**(I want to find new opportunities to do x) We then moved on to mapping these needs against the support/services that we and our partners offer to help us understand where we were meeting the needs and where the gaps were. ### Do user research We did a mixture of unmoderated online testing and one-to-one video testing with companies, where we validated the user needs to make sure they were still relevant in the Brexit/Covid-19 climate. Here’s what we learned: * Technical information around exporting is a high priority for users, especially around logistics/moving goods and customs, because of Brexit * The needs of users are different depending on the stage they’re at in their exporting journey ### Create company personas We created some high-level company personas based upon our research, which helped us understand the needs and barriers that companies face at different stages. ### Test how we’re structuring our web content We did several card-sorting exercises, where we started off by asking users to group our existing exporting content into categories that made sense to them to understand if the current site structure was working well. The results showed that it wasn’t. So we grouped the results into themes, which gave us five sections. We then ran a follow-up closed card sort to validate these five sections and check that users were easily able to sort the content using these new sections. ### Do a content review Once we were confident that we had a site structure that would work for our customers, we did a full content audit of all the exporting content. We matched all the content to the user needs that it met, which helped us see where the gaps were and where existing content needed to be improved. ### Do an SEO review Our SEO expert identified a number of exporting pages that could be ranking better if we made simple changes to what we called them, which would help us meet our goals of raising awareness of our exporting expertise and getting more enquiries. ### Benchmark and set targets We created a suite of measurable KPIs that relate to our five goals and could help us to gauge how any changes made perform against objectives. We benchmarked how the existing content performed in the first six months of 2020 and set targets to better those results. We created a real-time dashboard to allow us to track performance. ## What we changed The old exporting section looked like this: And this is our new exporting section: The big changes that we made are: * Allowing users to select whether they are a new or existing exporter when the land of the page, and showing them different content and services based upon where they are in their exporting journey * Creating a new ‘Delivery and documentation‘ section, which has information on the technical side of exporting, since we know that this is an area that many businesses struggle with * Putting all of our training programmes and events together in one section, so it’s clear what support services we offer and how to access them * Adding a new ‘Market opportunities‘ section, which includes information on the scale and scope of each opportunity and the types of companies that are eligible * Changing what we call things based upon our SEO research and the language that our customers use ## The results * The new exporting and international markets section met or exceeded 65% of all targets in the first three months * There was a 42% rise in total website sessions for exporting content compared to the previous three months, despite an 11% seasonal dip for Scottish Enterprise website sessions in the same period * The bounce rate for organic visits to exporting content is down 22% on the previous year to 26% (the SE site average for the same period was 41%), showing that content is resonating well with users * There has been a positive uplift in exporting search term rankings on Google UK, including ‘international ecommerce’ and ‘how to start exporting’ * The new ‘Market opportunities’ section has generated 14 enquiries so far You can view the full report on the first three months. ## What we’re doing next * We’ll continue to explore how to attract new users to the site and work with the marketing team to ensure any promotional activity meets the right audience * We’ll review the internal linking to our more detailed business guides from the exporting section, since they aren’t getting as many views and as much engagement as we’d like * We’ll check with the trade specialists to see if the quality of enquiries has improved since we updated the section – and if not, we’ll investigate what we need to do to change that Katie Dickerson + postsBio Formerly a service designer with Scottish Enterprise. * Katie Dickerson __10 things that businesses consistently tell us * Katie Dickerson __When users tell you that you’re focusing on the wrong thing – listen to them * Katie Dickerson __How providing tech support helped me understand our customers better * Katie Dickerson __What businesses think about Fair Work and Net Zero * Katie Dickerson __From service designer to user researcher * Katie Dickerson __How we made it easier for businesses to find coronavirus funding * Katie Dickerson __How to be a designer, teacher and parent at the same time * Katie Dickerson __Getting an economic development agency to act like a service provider * Katie Dickerson __Why you shouldn’t make assumptions about content * Katie Dickerson __How we used the Good Services Scale to evaluate the GlobalScot service ## Possibly related * The exporting experience: one year on * 10 things that businesses consistently tell us * How to create accessible Word documents * How our UX team is building a new design system * How we are improving the application process for… * Card sorting to improve information architecture

How we improved the exporting user journey on the Scottish Enterprise website

#serviceDesign #UXdesign

design.scotentblog.co.uk/how-we-improved-the-expo...

#Digitalisation #DigitalServices #DigitalGovernance #DigitalInclusion #DigitalEquity #DigitalDivide #DigitalRights #DigitalTransformation #eGovernment #GovTech #PublicServices #ServiceDesign #HumanCentredDesign #PublicPolicy #Democracy #SustainableDemocracies #FundamentalRights #TechForGood

This link is broken.

#404 #serviceDesig

design.scotentblog.co.uk/this%20link%20is%20broke...

Say it with me:

A diagram is only useful:
To express the specific need it is solving,
In the context it needs to do it,
For the length of time both those things hold true.

Then it has expired.

Don't get attached to your diagrams and redraw often!

#design #servicedesign #datavisualisation #ux

The Good Services Scale is a tool that was developed by Lou Downe, the director of design and transformation for land and housing at the UK government. It allows you to assess the quality of your service using the 15 principles of good service design.

#serviceDesign #GoodServicesScale […]

"All online activity generates carbon emissions. Every image downloaded, every click, server call and visit to our site. These types of interactions generate Scope 3 emissions.

Lowering these emissions helps Scottish Enterprise towards achieving our Net Zero targets. And, for our users, the […]

We’re really pleased to share that Register Dynamics has been awarded a place on the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 (DOS 7) framework.

🔗 Read the article here: www.register-dynamics.co.uk/...

#DOS7 #CCS #PublicSector #ServiceDesign #Data #GovTech

Don't forget on Thursday this week is another Service Design Breakfast. Join us at @clearleft.com's place in Brighton for a good old chinwag - this time with a guest speaker!

Subscribe to the calendar here:

servicedesignbreakfast.com

#serviceDesign #brighton

Gray Work: Optimizing What Isn’t Counted How Incomplete Measurement Externalizes Time, Attention, and Trust Every modern service claims efficiency.

Naming it helps us measure and manage it.
Dive in here: abalkhail.substack.com/p/gray-work-...
What Gray Work frustrations have you faced lately? Let's discuss!
#GrayWork #EfficiencyIllusion #Productivity #Economics #ServiceDesign

Integrating Speculative and Systemic Perspectives into Service Design Education in the Chinese Context * Journal of Futures Studies Service design education needs to evolve to equip students for complex and uncertain futures. In China, however, it remains dominated by linear, solution-oriented, and short-term mindsets, limiting th...

jfsdigital.org/2025-2/vol-3... What role #speculativedesign play in enhancing #servicedesign scholarship? Join this exploration into #educationdesign in #China with Zijun Lin, Beatrice Villari, and Ming Yan! See how they are increasingly exploring how to explicitly integrate #systemic, #critical,

A big warm welcome in to Thursday. This week I’ve been looking at Ontology (or how do we see this service). Have a good rest of the week 😊💎 @ougradsch.bsky.social #phd #design #research #psychology #servicedesign

Service landscape maps capture and illustrate that wider context and allow us to see the complexity at play, and to develop a better understanding of the user’s whole experience.

#serviceDesign

design.scotentblog.co.uk/service-landscape-maps-s...

Unlocking the Potential for Ecosystem Thinking in Service Design When you hear the word ‘ecosystem,’ you’re perhaps most likely to think of a biological ecosystem, such as a tropical rainforest or a coral reef; a network of interdependent organ…

Your service isn’t isolated.

Your users don’t exist inside your service. Your service exists inside their lives.

Thinking about the wider ecosystem can lead to better designed products & services, and better outcomes.

simonpenny.wordpress.com/2023/10/07/u...

#DesignThinking #HCD #ServiceDesign

AI seems to want to compress many conversations, forms and relationships into a hyperfast moment.

Does #ServiceDesign exist when it’s just a button for a blipvert of an AI interaction?

Service Design Thursday 19th February 2026 - the Cybernetics edition. Last week I looked at neural networks, and this time it’s been its companion Cybernetics. Have a good rest of your week 😊💎 @ougradsch.bsky.social #phd #design #research #psychology #cybernetics #servicedesign

Martin Jordan & Kara Kane: The long slog of public service design Revisit Martin & Kara’s session from 2023. To join our mailing list, where you can find out about future events; please visit: govservicedesign.net/mailing-list?utm_source=website&utm_medium=archive...

And here is one more talk on the long slog of public #serviceDesign – from @sdingov.bsky.social’s 2023 conference:

vimeo.com/886475620

"Sometimes you go into user research with a hypothesis and the research validates it. That’s great. That’s easy. But what I really love is when you go in with a hypothesis and the research totally flips it on its head. That’s when you learn the most."

#userResearch #serviceDesign […]

"It’s not until someone questions the way we do things that we start to consider: Is this really the best way to do it? Can improvements be made? Do we really need that? Or even just reassure us that we are doing it the best way possible."

#serviceDesign […]

SCAD service design students take a group photo with Harmonic designers during their class visit last Friday

SCAD students learning about journey management

PQ chatting with students

Big thanks to the SCAD service design students who visited us last week! We dug into journey management, design + AI, and more in breakout chats.

Come back anytime! 💙
#ServiceDesign #SCAD #FutureOfDesign #ThisIsHarmonic

Service Co-design practice and research week-notes 146. Five people and things to celebrate this week, all of whom help us design the invisible. Hope you have a good week ahead 😊🎢 @ougradsch.bsky.social #phd #design #research #psychology #DesignLeadership #ServiceDesign #CoDesign

Partial screenshot of a website displaying 2 open design positions: • Service designer and project lead in digital government in Potsdam • UX specialist at the tax and revenue office Kassel

#DesignJob klaxon 📯

There is a brand-new #ServiceDesign job opening at @digital-agentur.de in Potsdam. It includes #UserResearch & #GovDesign stakeholder work. The position is a parental leave cover until April 2027

There’s also a UX specialist role in Kassel

⬇️
verwaltungsgestaltung.de#positionen

Screenshot of the Miro Metro map template

Metro, or tube maps, can be a useful way to depict a high level user journey through a service.

They seem to be especially popular with senior managers, who appreciate their simplicity and familiarity.

We've made a Miro template, if you use that tool […]

[Original post on mastodon.scot]