Skip to main content
All CollectionsService Design Q&ACareer in Service DesignTransitioning to Service Design
🤔 ▶️ How can you work in a service design job if you don’t have a service design degree?
🤔 ▶️ How can you work in a service design job if you don’t have a service design degree?
Daniele Catalanotto avatar
Written by Daniele Catalanotto
Updated over a year ago

Summary of the video

  • Most service design practitioners do not have a formal education in service design

  • Many people who use service design skills do not have a service design job title

  • It is possible to work as a service designer without a proper degree or job title

  • Mental shift: stop looking for approval to use service design skills, just use them

Transcript of the video

This transcript was generated using Descript. So it might contain some creative mistakes.

with this question. How can you work in a service design job if you don't have a service design degree? Good question from Joanna. And yeah, it's always difficult when you feel you don't have the credentials to do the job. How can you do the work and how can you get hired? The answer is, in fact, Quite simple.

You can. That's the good news. And the good news is that there is even data that shows that it is possible to get a job as someone working in service design, even if you haven't a proper job. degree in it. So let me share with you the data of this report. That's the report. That's a report called the state of service design in the U.

S. That's a report that has been published lately. So in 22 and 22 by the agency from in the U. S. And it analyzes a bit the career paths of service designer and how it is to be a service designer. in the United States. And what we see here is a few elements that can be interesting.

The first learning from that report is that most people who are service design practitioners, indeed, don't have a formal education in service design. And that's what we see with this 24%, only 24 percent of people who responded to that research have a formal education. in service design. Okay, interesting.

But still, they are working in a service design capacity, even if they don't have the proper education. That's inspiring. The data shows us that you can work as a service designer, even if you don't have a proper degree. Okay, very interesting. Now, Let's go a bit deeper. And here there is a mental shift that I find very interesting that is shown in this report.

And this is one insight that I find extremely interesting. A high percentage of service design practitioners are not working in service design roles. There is a lot of people who are using service design skills, who consider themselves as service design nerds, service design practitioners, but these people maybe don't have a service design job title.

And that's quite interesting because if we look at it myself, I work part time at the Salvation Army. And there, I don't have the job title service designer, senior service designer, or something like that. My job title is innovation coach. But what do I do? A lot of service design. I use all my service design skills there.

So is it a problem for me to not be called service then? No. I don't care because what I care is what I do, not how people call me. You can call me chocolate guy. I like it. No problem. You call me, can call me innovation guy. No, that's okay. What I, what is important to me is that I'm doing. And my passion is service design.

And that's what this report is showing us. And it's like mental shift that is quite interesting, which is this idea that to do a job in service design, you don't have to do it with a title, with a job title that is service design. So it's very possible to be a service designer without degree in service design.

A community question

This question was asked by a community member for the third Service Design webinar. You can rewatch the full webinar for free with all the show notes and slides.

✨ Made with assistance of AI.

The transcript of the video was made using Descript, and the summary was made by using Notion.ai and the automated transcript with the prompt: "Make a summary with bullet points"

Did this answer your question?