Consider the service system in which a product exists
My colleague Chris Wilkinson recently published a new white paper on Service Design. If you've ever found your new launch land flat on its face - you should check out this process and implement the techniques. The white paper outlines how integrating service design into product development produces measurable results by bringing design thinking to improve the bottom line. Rather than chasing a vague series of metrics, focus on the full benefits a product can provide and measure each respectively.
The discipline of service design seeks to understand the entire system around a product:
- the people
- products
- related systems
- interactions
- workflows
- back-end, and front-end processes
The ways each of these aspects are connected, developed, and maintained makes a material impact on the customer experience.
If you follow Chris' guide, building a system-level perspective will allow you a greater insight into the unique risks associated with building or integrating a product into the existing environment (e.g., network considerations, data quality, and overall performance). You will uncover the upstream dependencies and downstream impact the product has on the business and the customer. Through this, it is possible to turn risks that competing products might not account for into a competitive advantage.