Digging Deep: How Service Designers and Archaeologists Unearth Human Behavior
From Artifacts to User Journeys: Bridging the Past and Future
A service designer and an archaeologist may seem to work in entirely different fields, but they share some intriguing commonalities. Both professions involve uncovering insights, understanding human behavior, and constructing narratives. Here's a comparison:
1. Discovery and Exploration
Archaeologist: Investigates the past by uncovering physical artifacts, historical records, environmental data and structures to understand ancient cultures and civilizations.
Service Designer: Investigates the present (and future) by uncovering data and insights into user needs, pain points, and behaviors to design better services.
2. Research and Analysis
Archaeologist: Uses techniques like excavation, field surveys, and lab analysis to gather and analyze data about historical contexts.
Service Designer: Uses methods like user research, interviews, journey mapping, and data analysis to understand user experiences and systems.
3. Creating Narratives and Storytelling
Archaeologist: Reconstructs the story of past societies by piecing together fragments of evidence, offering interpretations of how people lived and interacted.
Service Designer: Builds narratives about user experiences by synthesizing insights into personas, customer journeys, and service blueprints.
4. Systems Thinking
Archaeologist: Understands the interconnectedness of elements in ancient societies, from economy and religion to daily life.
Service Designer: Examines and designs the systems that connect touchpoints, stakeholders, and processes to create seamless service experiences.
5. Problem Solving and Iteration
Archaeologist: Faces challenges like incomplete evidence or site preservation and adapts methods to interpret findings.
Service Designer: Deals with complex service ecosystems and iterates designs based on feedback and constraints.
6. Tools and Artifacts
Archaeologist: Works with tools like trowels, sieves, and dating techniques to analyze physical artifacts.
Service Designer: Uses tools like wireframes, prototypes, and digital platforms to map and design services.
7. Human-Centered Approach
Archaeologist: Strives to understand the needs, behaviors and human experience of past societies across time by studying material culture and historical context.
Service Designer: Focuses on improving the human experience by addressing user needs, motivations, and pain points.
Both service designers and archaeologists are detectives of a sort. They dig deep, uncover hidden truths, analyze evidence, and piece together a picture of human behavior – whether it's the behavior of modern users or the behavior of past societies, to create a deeper understanding of human life.
The main difference is their temporal focus - service designers work to improve future experiences while archaeologists study past ones. However, both ultimately contribute to our understanding of human behavior and needs across time.