UX or Service Design...HELP!?

Hi Everyone. I need some advice.

I am a complete newbie and am currently studying UX at the IDF (I am an architect by profession). I am interested in human-centred design though I am less interested in apps and websites. I dont really want to spend all my time in front the Adobe suite, agonising over the size and colour of buttons or icons. It is just not something I can see myself being passionate about.

A friend of mine is a service designer in Berlin and he says that is the way to go: a more holistic, people-centred approach. Am I getting UX wrong or is it service design I should be focussing on? Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated

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You know my position so I’ll keep my mouth shut and encourage others to answer. Let’s see what people think.

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Most of my UX experience has been with Apps and websites, although I’ve also worked on ATM machines and Voice experiences too, so UX doesn’t necessarily have to just be Apps and websites.

As far as i understand it, service design encompasses the full end-to-end journey for the customer, so as well as digital touch points, you’d also consider offline/omnichannel experiences. It sounds really interesting, and there’s a lot of overlapping skills/concepts with UX, so I think regardless of which avenue you follow, your UX experience right now will help in either career, so well worth continuing IMO

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Well its a bit hard to answer as the question answers itself.

UX design is just a function of software development if working in software, ie Web Apps, Mobile Apps, OOP apps. Service design being a greater function of human interaction is not UX in UX traditional sense, but clearly has a user experience component.

My thought is you are getting stuck in semantics. Do what you want to do, found out how its done, then find a job or create a job doing it.

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Can you link to your previous thoughts about this? I’d love to read them.

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It was a discussion that Mark and I had on Slack so unfortunately I can’t link to it but in essence I was saying that I think this is a semantics issue. UX is not a digital practice. It can be, but it’s not by definition. We need to move away from the “UI/UX as one thing” misconception.

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True.

I too am looking to use user experience design to improve social-emotional well being at grade level schools. I’m a graduate student in School Psychology and am always looking for User Experience Service Design techniques and methods to employ at the school and district levels. It was difficult to find a pathway to this career and has taken far too long to integrate the two fields. If anyone knows of free resources for UX’ing the educational system, please let me know.

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Are we talking computers soley? That would be HCI.

Personally for me the most interesting design work is done in Industrial Design around HID, how does the Porsche steering wheel feel to the user, what can the user do with it etc.

This blog my interest you.