Service Design- A term that would sound vague and absurd when told to a design student, who expects to be ideating and illustrating all the time.
But Service design probably needs a Design background because a Designer is trained to immerse himself or herself into the process and not bask in the result.
Service Design is majorly about PROCESS, since it people from all spaces and backgrounds to use a public service.
Service Design is about making a customer’s experience through any kind of journey, comfortable and hassle-free.
One can call service design the intangible equivalent of “consumerism”, since it is always customer-centric and about impressing the user.
So probably we will be using the word “user-friendly” and “customer-friendly” a lot.
Coming back to making to a hassle-free journey, we define an ideal service as efficient, speedy, comfortable and one that offers transparency.
As an amateur, learning Service Design, me and my co-students couldn’t quite clearly understand what a service means.
Services are so deeply embedded in our life that it is hard to think about them in detail. Usually we end up saying, “Well, the service is still functioning. So it must be fine.”
For instance, our group has to redesign or modify the public transport service.
The important challenge we had to overcome was that of differentiating between a system and a service.
A service is a subset of a system.
A system involves policies, legal things and political connections.
A service is more about the “janta”
It is that which links people to the system that is being run.
Hence, Service Design is for the people, by the people, of the people.
It is about involving people to help people and mutually establish an efficiently functioning service.
Our Topic for Service Design is “Public Transort”
Week 1:
We made an ambitious entrée. Considering that we could play with the already existing system, we thought of proposing a reduction in the number of Autos(that actually consume a lot of fuel and are very costly for daily use of common man). The autos would be replaced by buses, since autos in Bangalore do not follow a standard fare card.Buses owned by the State transport could be in three different sizes- large, medium and small- depending on which roads and distances they ply on.
This of course had loopholes, since designing a service does not involve changing the system and most certainly modifying the existing infrastructure is off the charts.
What is on the charts though, is modifying the infrastructure to create an efficient service.
That is what we did in week 2.
Week 2:
In the second week, we tried to define what an efficient bus service meant to us.
That gave us this definition: “An efficient bus service is a subset of an ideal transport system offered by the Government for the residents of the city and other population related to it, to carry people along a defined route, to and fro. The service must have a standard fare system, responsible employees, it must be delivered speedily, must be comfortable and must carry the passengers to the desired destination.”
Then we tried to draw a parallel between the existing and ideal service.
So we concluded that the BMTC fare system was fair and decent.
Speaking about carrying passengers to desired destination, we looked into the number of bus stops in every 2 kms.
We also thought of implementing a supplementary service (like autos-autostands) near every bus depot that ensure a continued tranort service for passengers. Such a service should be reasonable, available 24 by 7, and have a standard fare chart.
Also we think about how we could reduce the duration of the travel (which is a bit hard given the amount of traffic).
Week 3:
During week 3, we tried to begin implementing some rough clauses of an actual service.
Firstly, as students who have come to learn in a new city, where a different language is spoken, we had quite a hard time making out which bus goes where.
So through our thinking, we proposed establishing a information bulletin on every bus stop, bus depot and bus that includes a map, a bus number, bus route etc.
And inside every bus.
Some of the most important elements in a bus service are:
1. Comfortable seats
2. Luggage storage
3. Garbage bin
4. A readable map
5. Proper lighting and ventilation
Things that we have begun to think about to make the service more efficient.
1. Mode of paying fare. (eg. Installing automated machines or appointing a conductor at every 2 bus stops in addition to the ones in the bus to reduce a chaos)
2. Crowd dynamics
3. Proper arrangement for toodlers(like low lying handles etc) and senior citizens
So we could say, that we have almost started on the path to thinking of establishing an efficient service.
We can proudly say that though we are not awesomely equipped to design a service, but we are in a much better position in 3 weeks, thanks to Deepta’s knowledge and feedback that she keeps supplying us with.
