Introducing disruptive technologies to the market requires more than technical excellence. When new products emerge, customer commitment to the new product is not guaranteed. Could service design be an answer?

Design thinking as a growth tool

t barriers when entering markets. They often face customer scepticism, a lack of regulatory frameworks, or resistance to higher upfront costs. They must also be ready to meet modern market demands that value customer experience higher than product specifications.    

Research shows that companies effectively integrating design thinking achieve 32% higher revenue growth and 56% higher shareholder returns. This shift affects even industrial business-to-business contexts, where user experience increasingly drives purchasing decisions.

Service design provides a structured framework for understanding customer needs beyond technical specifications. This approach proves particularly valuable when introducing new technologies. However, service design is often a resource and time-intensive process, which startups cannot always afford. Integrating the service design process into a fast development process for startups can be difficult.

Why service design falls short in startup context

Standard service design approaches often involve detailed and costly research, extensive stakeholder engagement, and longer iteration processes. This process allows building a holistic approach. However, this complexity can overwhelm startup teams that simultaneously juggle product development, manufacturing scale-up, and customer acquisition.

Therefore, when thinking about business development methods, one should consider that manufacturing startups operate under different constraints: limited resources, time pressure, and evolving organisational structures. They also require a much quicker market validation process.

Making service design leaner

One way to address shortcomings is to combine service design with other business improvement methods, such as the Lean UX methodology. Lean UX focuses on three phases: think, make, and check. It delivers minimum viable products through short customer feedback loops and prioritises quick hypothesis testing over exhaustive research.

Combining service design with the lean UX approach allows companies to benefit from both perspectives. Service design offers visual and analytical tools and methods, such as personas, journey maps, wireframes, and service blueprints. It brings in the notion of co-design. These methods help teams understand user needs and define key interaction points. Lean UX, in turn, allows for iteration speed and modular development of product-service systems. Teams can start small and scale solutions as resources become available.

Startups can focus on critical decision points rather than mapping entire customer journeys. Instead of comprehensive service systems, they develop modular solutions that address immediate customer pain points while keeping long-term goals in mind.

Making it work – practical applications

To make this integrated approach work in practice, service design must not be added as a separate, time-consuming layer but embedded into the company’s existing working methods. This approach means focusing on what is essential: identifying the most critical decision points, working with ”good enough” design solutions, and validating assumptions early. It is also a lot about the mindset shifts within teams using service design to help align internal processes.

Another element startup teams can adopt is to split the concept development process into short, modular sessions guided by development hypotheses. These co-design sessions can address key phases such as defining the problem, identifying the value proposition, visualising the solution, and planning lean testing activities. Each step focuses on learning quickly and adapting based on customer insights. For example, early-stage visualisations such as simple storyboards or prioritisation matrices can help teams quickly evaluate which features are most valuable from the user’s point of view – without building a complete prototype in a single go. The co-design process may also be included in the existing meetings, allocating 15-30 minutes to ideation and exchange.

Ultimately, making service design work for manufacturing startups is not about following a textbook. It is about understanding and adapting business improvement tools, including service design, lean UX, and others, to fit startup companies’ pace, resources, and needs.

Service design and Lean UX integration framework for concept development in manufacturing startups

Ciganska, I. (2025). Designing a multipurpose LNG technology supply app: Using service design in the manufacturing sector. Master’s Thesis. Turku University of Applied Sciences.

Snippets:

• How can manufacturing startups apply service design without creating additional constrains on product development?
• Blending service design with Lean UX creates a more accessible approach to customer and user engagement for manufacturing startups.