In summary

Does every servicee need service design or just a specific type?

To answer this community question, I would take a little bit of a tangent first.

In marketing and communication, we often hear the phrase:

That's a sentence from Austrian communication expert, Paul Watzlawick.

And it shows that whether you like it or not, you are always communicating. Even when you shut your mouth, you are saying something without saying anything.

By not answering, you might say, I don't want to provocate back. Or, fuck you, this is not interesting.

So even when you choose to not communicate, you still communicate.

And I feel that for service design, the same thing happens.

Because anything that happens in a service is a choice made by someone. It can be the choice of a team member, it can be the choice of the service owner.

Or the choice of a partner of the service.

Sure. Maybe it wasn't a very intentional choice, but it was still a choice.

Imagine this, you are a barbershop owner, and because you're not that nerdy, you just take cash and say to everyone, we don't take credit cards here.

You're designing how people pay for your service. This by default action for you, now becomes something that differentiates your service a lot from the competition.

Some of your clients might even see that your barbershop is a truly authentic and vintage one.

In that sense, Every type of service owner or team practices service design skills. Sometimes it's done intentionally and sometimes not.

But there is a great news here, which is, you don't need to be a service designer to design a great service. If you have great service intuitions, you can make the best authentic barbershop without even knowing that service design exists.

But still, you designed your service.

Therefore, service design isn't limited to a specific type of services.