Service prototyping

What I hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand.
Lao Tzu

What it is

Service prototypes - mockups of services - allow us to experience and test services before they’re produced. Prototypes provide insight on various service aspects - from desirability and usability, to viability. They can generate deeper understanding than written descriptions or visual depictions, which don’t deal as well with the time-related and intangible aspects of services.

Service prototypes can be rudimentary, comprising of acted-out scenarios with hand-sketched screens or improvised props. Conversely, they can be detailed mock-ups of systems, props, environments, and “trained staff” - to provide more realistic and convincing experiences.

Stop at the barrier

What you get

Service prototypes can support the design process by helping with many questions, for example:

• Is the service functional?
• Is the service desirable for the customer or user?
• Is it easy for them to use?
• Is it strategically desirable to offer this service?
• Is it economically or logistically viable to provide this service?

Service prototyping is suitable for several audiences. Potential service users can help refine a service’s design with their thoughts and feelings of a prototype experience. Project stakeholders from strategists to technical experts can gain understanding of the service - and its workings.  Prototypes can also serve to excite clients - and their colleagues - about the proposed service.

Good news

When to use it

The roughest, earliest prototypes may serve mainly to inform designers, during the generation and synthesis of ideas.  Learnings from early lo-fi prototyping usually prompt further design iterations.

Prototypes later in the design process (in the model or specify phases) are usually higher fidelity. Detailed interface designs may be tested, and more prototype elements may be “working,” rather than being suggested or “faked”. Prototypes at this level often prompt minor design tweaks, or simply validate a well-designed service.