Service design in support of engineer-led organizations


Engineer-led organizations often have a strong focus on technology and efficiency, and the products and services they develop are based on deep technical expertise. While such an approach is often necessary to solve complex problems, it can sometimes overlook the most important part of success: the customer experience.

This is where service design comes into play. It offers methods and tools that can be used to understand customer needs more deeply and to integrate user-orientation into technical solutions.

Bringing customer orientation into the development process

In engineering-driven organizations, development processes can focus too much on technical features and engineering sciences, leaving the user’s perspective in the background. Service design offers a way to bring customers and their needs to the center throughout the entire development process. Customer personas, customer paths and user research are key service design tools that can be used to understand customers’ real needs and goals.

When service design methods are introduced in an engineer-led organization, the development work is better guided by the user’s needs, and not only by technical performance or efficiency. This can help create solutions that not only work technically, but also serve the user better and offer a more positive user experience.

Building bridges between technical teams and customers

An engineer-led organization may focus on internal technical issues, in which case communication and cooperation with customers may remain incomplete. Service design helps create a dialogue between customers and the organization. This dialogue can play a key role in the birth of new innovations, as customers’ wishes and feedback can guide the development team towards more user-oriented and commercially successful solutions.

For example, tools used in service design, such as co-creation workshops  or testing prototypes with customers, can bring valuable insights into how technology should be developed so that it meets customers’ needs in the best possible way. This can help engineers better understand where their technical expertise should be directed.

Simplifying and clarifying complexity

In technically complex organizations, products and services can easily become complex and difficult for the user to understand. With the help of service design, complex processes can be simplified and made more user-friendly. This does not mean reducing technical features, but presenting them to the user more clearly and intuitively.

Service design uses a lot of visualizations and process maps, which can be used to break down complex services into comprehensible entities. This helps both users and internal teams to understand how the service works and how it could be improved. In an engineering-led organization, this can help reduce misunderstandings and ensure that the final product is understandable and accessible to the end user.

Generating user-oriented innovations

In many engineering-led organizations, innovation is based on technology development or performance improvement, which can limit the opportunities to develop truly new and valuable solutions from the user’s perspective. Service design can bring new ways to generate innovation by focusing on people’s needs and behavior.

For example, the design thinking process helps to identify problems and develop solutions iteratively based on user feedback. This approach can help an organization find new business opportunities or improve existing services to better serve users and provide added value. Engineers can bring their deep technical expertise to this process, but service design ensures that solutions are based on real user needs, not just the technology’s potential.

Developing a comprehensive customer experience

Engineer-led organizations often focus on individual products or systems, but service design helps to look at the customer experience as a whole. It broadens the perspective beyond the use of products and takes into account all interaction situations between the customer and the organization, whether it is a product purchase, implementation or customer service situation.

With the help of service design, the organization can map the entire customer path and identify its pain points and development areas. This can help create smoother and more consistent experiences for customers, which in turn increases satisfaction and engagement. An engineer-led organization can thus use its technical strengths to build a comprehensive service for the customer.

Improving internal processes and increasing cooperation

Service design does not only focus on customers, but its methods can also be applied to internal organizational processes and cooperation between teams. Service paths and stakeholder surveys can be used to improve the organization’s internal operations and ensure that different departments, such as product development, marketing and customer service, cooperate smoothly.

In an engineer-led organization, service design can help create a better connection between technical development and business goals. This can promote interaction between teams and ensure that technical solutions meet business needs and customer expectations.

Service design offers engineer-led organizations the opportunity to combine technical expertise with user-oriented design.

With a customer-centric approach, an organization can improve its services, simplify complexity and create solutions that better meet market and user needs. Service design methods can help engineers and designers work together to develop innovative and functional solutions, which can lead to better customer experience and business success.



Janne Gylling
Creative Director • janne@jannegylling.fi