Service Design: The Whole Picture That Creates Value
Many think design is about how an app looks. Service design is about how your entire organization works. We map the interplay between your employees, IT systems, and customers to remove bottlenecks and create services that actually function in everyday life.
In a complex digital landscape, it's no longer enough to polish the user interface (UI). A beautiful application has zero value if customer service doesn't have access to the same data as the customer, or if the logistics system in the "back room" fails under high load.
Service design is the discipline that sees the whole picture. It's the operational architecture that connects what the customer sees (frontstage) with the internal processes, systems, and people who deliver the service (backstage). At PXL, we use service design as a precision tool to specify robust software architecture and eliminate technical debt before it arises.
The Iceberg: What You See vs. What Delivers
A classic mistake in digitalization projects is allocating 80% of resources to the "top of the iceberg" – what the user sees on screen. But 80% of value creation (and error sources) lies below the waterline: in internal processes, outdated specialized systems, regulations, and organizational culture.
Service design is our diving equipment. We go beneath the surface to understand how your organization actually works, and where the pain points are.
From "Silos" to "Connected Services"
In both private and public sectors, "silo thinking" is the biggest enemy of good user experiences. The customer doesn't care that "Sales" and "Logistics" use different databases; they expect the item they ordered to actually arrive.
When we map a service, we often see "cracks" in the floor between departments – crevasses where the customer falls through. We seal these cracks by designing processes and integrations that flow across organizational boundaries.
Methodology: Service Blueprint as Architectural Drawing
Many confuse service design with Customer Journey Maps. While a customer journey maps what the customer feels, a Service Blueprint maps what the organization must do to deliver that feeling.
This is our most important tool for building a bridge between business and IT. A Blueprint visualizes four critical layers:
- User Action: What does the customer do? (E.g., "Submits application").
- Frontstage: What does the customer see? (Website, receipt, SMS).
- Backstage: What happens behind the scenes? (Case handler evaluates, warehouse picks, approval).
- Support Processes: Which systems, APIs, and databases enable this? (CRM, ERP, Payment Gateway).
The Connection to Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
At PXL, we're unique in our approach because we connect service design directly to technical architecture. A "Service Blueprint" is not just a drawing for us; it's the precursor to Domain-Driven Design (DDD).
- Bounded Contexts: The different phases in the service help us define logical boundaries in the software – where does "Sales" end and "Warehouse" begin? This determines the boundaries for microservices.
- API Contracts: The interaction lines in the blueprint define exactly what data must be exchanged between frontend and backend. This becomes API specifications.
- Domain Events: The events in the service (e.g., "Customer has paid") become Domain Events in an event-driven architecture, ensuring loose coupling between systems.
This means we build systems that mirror reality, resulting in lower technical debt and systems that are easier to maintain over time.
The Forgotten User: Employee Experience (EX)
You can't deliver a 5-star experience to the customer if employees are working with 1-star tools.
Many companies force their employees to be "human hardware" – manually moving data between systems that don't talk to each other. This leads to high cognitive load, errors, and burnout. We view Employee Experience (EX) as a critical part of service design.
By designing better internal specialized systems, admin panels, and dashboards, we free up time. When the system supports employees instead of working against them, both productivity and the quality of customer interactions increase.
Service Design in the Public Sector
For public organizations, service design is often about delivering on the mission of "Connected Services." Citizens have life events (having children, losing a job, starting a business) that span across agencies.
We have experience navigating the complexity of public administration. We know that benefit realization isn't just about money saved, but about increased trust, legal certainty, and equal treatment. By using methods like Gigamapping, we can visualize and manage the complex dependencies between legislation, IT systems, and public mandates.
From Operational Insight to Technical Architecture
At PXL, we integrate service design directly into the development process. We don't consider service mapping an isolated design exercise, but as the foundation for precise requirements specification and system architecture.
Our approach ensures that insights about user needs and internal work processes translate directly into technical specifications. A Service Blueprint functions for us as a governance document for data modeling and API design. This closes the gap between organizational processes and IT system capabilities before the code is written.
The result is solutions with lower technical debt, where the system is set up to support the organization's actual workflow over time.
We work closely with UX designers and developers to ensure that the service design can be technically realized and delivers a great user experience at every step.