THE SERVICE DESIGNER'S
SURVIVAL GUIDE TO
INTERNAL STARTUPS
Service Designers are not always familiar with lean startup methods. Here's how you can combine both worlds and thrive
These are my everyday tools. I have developed them over years of consulting and design work with global design teams.
From my first clients in a local agency, to my work in global consulting group Idean/CapGemini Invent, these are my tools of choice.
It is a streamlined combination of methods that will keep you user-centric, turbocharge your data-driven design skills, make teams accountable and keep management happy.
DATA DRIVEN
SERVICE DESIGN
Goals, Tracking, Research, Hypothesis, Moments, Relationship, Milestones — That's it.
The very hard-to-swallow pill is that project owners are attached to their ideas.
Service designers often commit to making those ideas work. That's a mistake.
Instead, focus to validate what people want from you — and how to convince clients to be wise and change their minds
STEP BY STEP
INTERNAL STARTUP DESIGN SPRINT
Client profile
ig company or medium-sized company trying a new idea
Team
Small cross-functional teams, "two-pizza teams". Project owners, Visual designer, Developer, Service Designer.
Duration
4-6 weeks, depending on the complexity of the project
Deliverables
Problem identification — qualitative & quantitative
Value proposition design
Prototyping solutions
Problem-solution fit — qualitative & quantitative validation
Next steps
Product-maket fit — quantitative validation
Business model fit — quantitative validation
EMPATHIZE, DIGITIZE,
HYPOTHIZE
First, observe your target users in their natural habitat. Discuss problems and current solutions: empathize with their contexts, discover their common sense.
Meanwhile, study their digital footprint (search behaviors, analytics, screen recordings). All that, together, allow you to formulate strong hypotheses.
UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION
Workshop with your team unique value propositions. They all have the same root: the service you're willing to build. Other than that, they should be different solutions to different problems. Not too far from one another, but contrasting enough so that you understand the different possibilities they open.
In the end of this process, you should have a service idea with a number of features outlined.
TEST
REVALIDATE
ITERATE
Take the service designed from your value propositions and test them. Do not settle for more qualitative studies. Build a façade and test in the open. The statistical relevance will be strong advocates for what the interviews point to.
BUILD A MOMENT-BASED CUSTOMER JOURNEY
With your service prototypes at hand, layout a customer journey anticipating what users want and feel at each step of the process.
Sprinkle the magic dust: add meaningful moments to make your service count.
PLAN HOW YOUR RELATIONSHIP GROWS
You now need to plan the progress of the relationship to each client — what happens after the first, second, third interaction to each customer, and how to direct them towards the higher value segment.
REPORTING MILESTONES: SCALING IDEAS
You are now able to create your innovation management model. It's a model that came from the operations, budgets, and impact your company makes.
It's your blueprint for your portfolio management, your internal startup culture, your innovation management policy and accounting.
