Oliver King, the co-founder and director of the UK service design consultancy Engine, was one of the speakers at this year’s service design symposium at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

Service is the act of helping somebody to do something, while design is the process of making something better for somebody. Translation is the challenge of connecting strategy and implementation. Engine operates in this “translation space”, figuring out how to get to implementation from strategy.

While service design is new to designers, its not new to service providers. After all, service have been around for a long, long time (just think of hotels and restaurants), and it’s foolish to think that, with service design, designers have stumbled onto something never before seen. However, what designers do bring to the table are skills and perspectives which can help innovate services.

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