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?

1. In your view, how is your research/work related to Service Design?

Society has moved towards a service economy and thus may require a different approach from both designers and leaders of service organizations. The role of design in business is broadening and moving towards a more strategic level in addition to the process of designing the multiplicity of touchpoints that in sum form a customer journey in a service context. To differentiate their offerings, service providers need to be innovative to meet conscious and unconscious user needs when designing or redesigning their services. As part of my PhD, I study how service designer’s user-centric attitude, their approach, methods and processes may inform organizational leaders when creating service innovation strategies. Organizational leaders are often not designers. However, they are part of the design and innovation process by creating visions and strategies, and by making design-related decisions to obtain the envisioned future. My aim is to introduce a Service Design Leadership framework at the intersection of design and organizational leadership intended to develop service innovations that are perceived as valuable by users, service organizations and other stakeholders.

2. In your view, what is the most/less interesting aspect of Service Design?

The distinction between product and services may be vague as a tangible product is often part of an intangible service. In contrast to customers’ relation to manufactured products, the service experience may be influenced by the fact that services often require greater interactions between service provider and the customer, or the customer’s interaction with other customers while ‘consuming’ the service. Services are co-created and at times produced jointly by the service provider and the customer, and the interaction influences the experience on both sides. Both parties control only parts of the service production process. This is both a design and a leadership challenge. In my view, therefore, one of the most interesting aspects of Service Design is that designing successful, holistic services needs to be approached in an integrated, multi-disciplinary way that includes most design disciplines in addition to organizational leadership, including empowerment of service provider’s employees.

3. Can you tell us about a Service Design research project(s) you did or read about?

My PhD studies are part of an ongoing Service Design research project named AT-ONE. The project is based on collaboration between partners from the service industry, service designers (both professional and students) and academics (both within business and design) and headed by professor Simon Clatworthy at AHO – The Oslo School of Architecture and Design. All partners collaborate in the further development of the method. The AT-ONE project aims to improve the early stages of service innovation through the integration of design thinking and design attitude into a structured innovation process by use of service designers’ methods and processes in a workshop-based model. Each letter in AT-ONE represents a lens that provide a means to enable service innovations. The five lenses are: Actors, Touchpoints, Offerings, Needs and Experience. Actors refer to actors who together provide the service. Touchpoints focus on development of the various touch points between customer and service provider. Offering refers to the design of what the service actually offers. Needs relates to user needs that the service meets. Experience concerns the perceived experience that the service gives the customer.
This is an ongoing project, and the findings are now being analyzed and will be shared in articles that are in the process of being written.
The research project is funded by the Research Council of Norway together with the industry. For further information, please see: www.service-innovation.org

4. Are there area(s) that you would like to do or see research on?

After finishing my PhD, I would like to do further research on how combining designers’ approach, methods, skills and processes with business strategies may enable service innovations. How may bridging the skill sets and approaches in business and design advance a Service Design Leadership approach that build capacity to innovate for services perceived to be valuable by users in the public service sector as well as in the private service sector?

1. In your view, how is your research/work related to Service Design?

My current work is about Design Decision making, currently in the urban environment. This includes Design Decisions about buildings, spaces as well as services to develop and support them. However throughout my career I have been interested in the way designers create experiences, through what they design (products, places, services and systems) and how they do it (process). Of course designers have not necessarily articulated it as such, nor perhaps put their work into the service design category. Indeed non-designers have been creating services and it is now interesting to apply the work I have been doing in design management alongside service design questions.

2. In your view, what is the most/less interesting aspect of Service Design?

It is systemic! It is interesting to see the emergence of service design theories, frameworks and practices, just as service marketing appeared twenty or so years ago, and has developed into a mature scholarly field, service design is still going through similar theoretical development through conceptual and practice based research. It will be interesting to observe and contribute to the debates through work in various public sectors.

3. Can you tell us about a Service Design research project(s) you did or read about?

I was involved in an EPSRC sandpit in Nutrition and Ageing. This resulted in funding a project on nutrition for older people in hospitals. The project called ‘mapp-mal’ will study the food journey from where it is produced to the point of production. This is a really interesting research project as it looks in a multidisciplinary way at the system of diet, nutrition, products and services as they manifest in the food journey.
[For more information see http://newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/projects/29]

4. Are there area(s) that you would like to do or see research on?

I’d like to see research on Higher Education and Airports. Secondary education with the Building School for the Future program in UK (see Design Council work, Dott07 or School Works as examples) has attracted the attention of the design community, while Higher Education is an area where little research has been done in relation to Service Design. It is hardly conceived as a service. Airports and travelling experiences are becoming threatening and unpleasant because of all the security checks and barriers. More research on passenger journey could provide guidance on how to improve this.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

Who would you like to invite in this conversation about Service Design Research?

Mike Press, University of Dundee
Turkka Keinonen, University of Art and Design Helsinki

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

How does Service Design fit into the Digital Economy?