interviews
Service Design Management
11th January 2010PhD student / Teaching Fellow
University of Dundee
Dundee, UK
1. In your view, how is your research/work related to Service Design?
I am undertaking a PhD research project that focus on Service Design Management, mainly looking at how designers work with multiple stakeholders at project level environment. My research questions include ‘who are important stakeholders to service designers?’, ‘What are the design stages these stakeholder take part?’, and ‘how to maximize the result of stakeholder involvement within the limited resources and time?’
I also worked as a teaching fellow at the University of Dundee on the Master of Design programme for the past three years. The Master’s programme has a strong interest in interdisciplinary design practice and people-centred design approach, thus, Service Design naturally became an interesting topic of my research and always the emphasis of my teaching.
2. In your view, what is the most/less interesting aspect of Service Design?
I am fascinated by the dynamic interactions among people (and some really clever machines) in service systems, as well as its development. Furthermore, the creativity and openness that designers could potentially bring into a project is another very interesting aspect to me. The designers who practice Service Design are keen on being out there with service users and also with other stakeholders in the service system, which is very different from the traditional way of design where designers stay in a studio and craft their piece of work to perfection, alone. In this process, designers learn from their stakeholders for inspiration, and many stakeholders also learn how to develop and delivery services with new techniques and even new ways of thinking. The design process involves complex learning for all. Not only designers, but also many other stakeholders, directly or indirectly, learn to create some new understanding of the service they developed in the process. Thus, my motivation is to understand how the new knowledge of services created by Service Design can find its way into the implementation, and perhaps even lead to organisational change.
The less interesting aspect to me, personally, might be the actually details of specific touch points. I am not saying it is not important aspect, it is very important because it embedded ideas, and draws stakeholders’ attention because it might be valuable to some of them. However, I am more interested in the people interactions happened among different phases of design and how people share and learn from this process. By the end of the day, the designers are not going to deliver the service. The touch point can go out-of-date fairly quickly when new technologies come along, but what people have learned from working in a design-led approach might have a longer legacy and bigger impact in the long run.
3. Can you tell us about a Service Design research project(s) you did or read about?
My PhD project is mainly situated in the domain of Service Design, although I did reach out to literatures of Service Management, Design Management and, more recently, project level Knowledge Management domain in the context of innovation. The research question is, ‘how service designers manage multiple stakeholder involvement in a project environment?’ I collected Service Design stories form British service designers and focused on four in details as my case studies. All case studies involved complex stakeholder relationships and illustrated how designers navigate their path working with various stakeholder groups. The studies acknowledged the importance of involving a wide range of stakeholder groups in Service Design practice, as well as the challenge brought about by it. It suggested that designer decide different approaches for involving stakeholder groups at different stage of the design process. One important element that influenced this decision-making was the knowledge generation and diffusion environment. Mindfully or intuitively, designers assessed their position in this environment and adopted suitable approach(s) to generate new tools or understanding with key stakeholders in the process.
4. Are there area(s) that you would like to do or see research on?
The legacy of my PhD study indicated interesting but often overlooked links between Service Design, Knowledge Generation/diffusion, and Change Management. I believe that, to sustain a service as a self-organise system, it is crucial that service designers understand how their design legacy could embody the new knowledge and evolve new practices that respond to emerging changes in the environment.
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Your suggestions for the blog:
Who would you like to invite in this conversation about Service Design Research?
Lauren Tan, PhD research student at Northumbria University, her research is based on case studies from DOTT07 projects.
What is the question do you have about Service Design?
What are the limits of Service Design?