The guest of the program 'Career Journey: Becoming a Designer in the UX/UI Field', organized by the Visual Communication Design Department of Üsküdar Üniversitesi Faculty of Communication, was Industrial Designer Project Manager Selin Koşağan Şengün. The moderation of the online program was carried out by Head of Visual Communication Design Department Assoc. Prof. Dr. And Algül.
“Service design covers every area where there is a customer relationship, where the customer interacts”
Şengün, referring to the fact that the initial meaning of the service design concept emerged from the banking sector, said: “Today, I will provide you with information on career steps in the sense of service design. Graduates of Visual Communication Design tend to be a bit more inclined towards UI design because their visual world is richer. I want to start by asking, 'What is service design?' It's a concept that emerged in the banking sector in the 1970s and 80s. We are talking about an integrated service system. It encompasses all structuring and planning activities related to customer relations, including banking experiences for businesses, infrastructural experiences on interfaces, and communication. It is not limited to just the interface. It covers every area where there is a relationship with the customer, where the customer interacts. We can call the entire experience, from the initial definition phase to the final phase, service design. When do users first interact with a product, how do they interact, what do they pay attention to, and what kind of information do they want to obtain? Consequently, we encounter some problems at these stages. We make these problems more visible and start to address them, generating solutions.”
“Elderly users want to be a bit more interactive while shopping.”
Şengün, mentioning the production of needs based on user tracking, gave examples of solutions produced for problems: “Since everyone, including the elderly, does their grocery shopping online, human contact has decreased. User groups who are a bit older still prefer to go to the market. And for this reason, 'chat checkouts' are used today, which are the opposite of express checkouts, to increase human interaction where they can do their shopping. This idea actually emerged from observing the market habits of people in this age group and defining their needs. The elderly user segment actually wants to be a bit more interactive when shopping. This makes them feel good and positively affects their shopping experience. All these ideas arise from a need.”
Şengün stated that within this service design journey, there are revolutionary designers, marketers, and sales departments, and also noted that researchers are the ones who identify problems and needs. Şengün said: “By researchers, we mean the people who conduct the necessary research at the very beginning of the process to identify these needs and problems. They come to us with definitions of the problems they have found. Researchers came to us with a problem, and guest designers create the necessary infrastructure to produce a solution for it. We can think of it like the architectural drawing of a building.”