How can we develop companies’ internal services with service design? This question is answered in by considering a collaborative case with a Finnish-based data and cyber security company F-Secure Corporation (FSC). The FSC has business-to-business customers and private customers in over 40 countries globally, which makes it useful for gathering knowledge on customizing services for various languages and cultures. This paper focuses on the cultural aspect of data security service development by focusing on documentation and localization team (DL team) that works for FSC Helsinki. The group consists of 13 people who offer services of documentation, i.e., technical writing, for user interfaces that are integrated in FSC’s products, and localization of those documents in different languages.

The collaboration between the University of Lapland (UoL) and the FSC was developed in a business-led research and development consortia (Need for Speed [N4S]) during a three-year service design study. Service design as a multidisciplinary methodology and mindset has a new perspective to offer in terms of data and information technology-oriented systems development, one that is at the intersection of technological systems development and human-centered design methodology. Service design for projects that use the Service Innovation Corner (SINCO) laboratory at the University of Lapland has been strongly integrated into business development through qualitative and constructive design methods and always in collaboration with real company cases. Therefore, a participatory focus group on DL was extremely interesting because of a shared interest in cultural issues from both the service design team from the UoL and the DL team from the FSC.