A Tiny Service Design Dictionary
A glossary of 400+ terms used by service designers
I created a tiny dictionary or glossary that brings together more than 400 definitions of terms used by service designers or similar type of crazy people like ux designers, experience designers or any type of guy in the innovation field.
A few definitions you should check
In this dictionary you can find the very basic terms of Service Design, as for example: user, backstage or co-creation. These can be pretty handy for the newcomers and students. But there are also a lot of terms that I didn’t know myself before I started this project. These can be pretty fun for anyone who wants to have a good laugh or add a few words in his personal database. Here a few of these fun terms that I recommend that you check:
- Clown-Invariant Research Design
- Digital Divide
- Creeping Featurism
- Kaikaku
- Frankensteining
To discover these terms you can simply use the search feature of the dictionary.
Discover Service Design terms via collections
As there are over 400+ definitions in this dictionary it might be a bit overwhelming at first. That’s why I created collections. Collections regroup terms under a same topic. Here a few collections that you can discover in the app:
- Service Design 101: A selection of the basics terms every Service Designer should know
- Impress people during parties: Fancy terms which go beyond simple Service Design
- The funny ones: Terms and definitions which will make you smile.
- Digital 101: Terms about designing apps and websites
- Business 101: Basic terms about business
- User Research: A selection of basics terms on User Research and testing
- Innovation types: The different ways to innovate
- Change Management 101: Terms used in change management projects
- Technology buzzwords: Fancy terms for fancy technology
- Behavioral Economics 101: Inspiring Behavioral Economics terms for Service Designers
- Accessibility 101: Learn key terms about accessibility
- Measuring Service Design: Metrics that show the power of Service Design
- Idea generation: Terms and techniques about finding new ideas
- Japanese terms: Terms on design and lean manufacturing coming from Japan
- Social Innovation 101: Terms associated with projects in the social sector
A few Service Design video definitions
From time to time I take a definition and make a little explainer video about it. Basically in those tiny 2 minutes videos I give the service design term definition and then add my little personal opinion to it. Here a few of these videos:
What is the 20/80 rule of Pareto principle?
What is the 10 minutes rule?
What is the 2 seconds rule?
From where do the definitions come?
I just curated the definitions. I’m not the author of these definitions. I basically went hunting on Google for glossaries of innovation, design thinking, UX, change management, experience design, meta design terms. And brought all these terms together. For each definition you’ll find the author and a link to the website I found it first.
Behind the scenes details
For those interested in how and why I built this little glossary of Service Design terms, here a few more information:
Why does this exist?
I find it personally simpler to learn new things by having a tiny side project which I then can publish. It keeps the motivation high. So in order to verify if my personal definitions were accurate and also to learn new terms I created this tiny dictionary. Plus it’s always fun to be able to say during a work session things like this:
I’m afraid that the frankensteining probability in this project seems high.
Such a sentence would certainly create some laughs and a fun debate. And a good laugh is sometimes a good enough reason for something to exist.
Get the raw data of the dictionary
The Service Design dictionary is built with a simple Google Sheet and Glideapp. If you want to play with the content of the dictionary by yourself you can copy the Google Spreadsheet here.
Want to help?
You see a missing definition? Don’t like one of the definitions? Just write an answer or comment to this post with the missing or badly defined word, a definition and the source. I’ll try to add it to the dictionary.
N.B
You can also find the dictionary in the top navigation of the Service Design Magazine home page 🤓
ℹ️ Hey, by the way, if you are interested in Service Design, you might be interested in the Service Design Jobs website that lists more than 1200 service design job opportunities from more than 40 countries.
