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

On my opinion Service Design is an evidence of the evolution of designer’s roles. Instead of dealing only with tangible materials, designers nowadays found a new path in services, systems and communities, which demands new skills and new levels of involvement. Design approaches these new areas with a systemic and holistic perspective, a multi and interdisciplinary way of working and a better consideration over sustainability.
Among all the specialties of services (such as financial, communicational, transportation, education, governmental, commercial and leisure), my research concentrates on the tourism sector, focusing on the hostelling segment. This choice is due to the importance and growth of this kind of service in my country (Brazil) and the lack of studies connecting this sector to design and sustainability.
So, in synthesis, the research aims to propose a model to assist designers in the project of tourist services considering sustainable aspects. It started in 2009 and will develop into practical experimentation in 2010; the PhD thesis is also supported by other models and methods like those proposed by Service Design Tools (www.servicedesigntools.org/) and the LOLA Project (www.sustainable-everyday.net/lolaimplementation/lola_brazil/), which engage communities in a co-design process for social innovation.
Important to say is that tourism activity should consider, besides the qualities and goods offered by local communities, the solutions people develop for their daily problems, according to their context and resources. This aspect emphasizes community participation in the process of service design.

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

I think that the most interesting aspect of Service Design is the great variety and complexity of variables that influence each project; above all the improbability to obtain all the planned results, mainly because the key resource of services is people, which is of course impossible to control or predict.
In the same way, this heterogeneity of services brings a further difficulty to the profession of Service Design: how designers can participate in developing platforms to enable the desired behavior and interactions to emerge?
This is in fact a good and long discussion. Despite that, designers, nowadays, have an important and peculiar role in the society, that is leading projects, services and people to better respond to the needs of the society and of the environment. It’s not only necessary to be economically efficient but also ethic, fair and sustainable. Designers need to get along with this change and contribute to the achievement of a better way of living, for everyone.

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

I read about Service Design mainly thought writings by Morelli, Sangiorgi, Cipolla and Koskinen. In particular Dougherty and Manzini, with their focus on sustainability and design, introduced me to an interesting approach. Their visions about designer’s role led me to see what design can embrace as a profession, not only in the operational field but also at a more strategic level. The challenges of design are increasing every day; moving from a production line to a systemic and interconnected net of problems and solutions, which change rapidly and dynamically in a way that it’s difficult to measure or control.
So, in this scenario, my research tries to find ways designers can contribute to a dynamic equilibrium for the planet and to people’s well-being. For example, in Brazil, where I live, some organizations are being certified and recognized due to their work embracing sustainability. Also, designers are acting inside communities to find out solutions to cooperate to their daily life and working with them to help generating new opportunities of work and employment. Some examples of designer’s activity and sustainability are presented in the following sites:
www.ufpe.br/sendes
www.closchiavo.pro.br/
www.centropedesign.com.br/projetos_design_social.php
www.prainhadocantoverde.org
www.ltds.ufrj.br/desis/des-serv.htm

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

Well, I’d like to see and read more about cases and models of Service Design applied to the tourism sector, and also about Service Design and Sustainability. It’s important to my research and to its development to see models and methods working in reality – even if, adapted to each particular reality. At the moment, I’m looking for ways to continue the research and to discover solutions and new ideas amongst Brazilian cases, mainly in my state, Pernambuco. (Pernambuco is located in the North East of Brazil, that is well known for it’s natural beauties and cultural icons such as: Porto de Galinhas, Fernando de Noronha, Olinda, J. Borges, Mestre Vitalino and rhythms as Frevo and Maracatu ).

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

In the last few years I’ve been mainly working on methodological aspects of service design.
I think the tools and methods used by designers in product design are not always adequate to design services. Service design includes the definition of some aspects, such as time and interaction, that have not been part of the traditional design domain. For this reason new methods and tools need to be developed.
I’ve been working on tools and methods in three main areas:
1. Tools and methods to analyse users behaviour and contextual conditions;
2. Design tools to design new services, with particular attention to the development of modular and systemic service solutions;
3. Techniques and methods to represent services, especially in regard to those aspects that are not traditionally included in the design activity, such as time and interaction.

I’ve developed some of those tools by adapting them from other disciplines, such as information architecture, interaction design and engineering.

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

For many years the attention to services was mainly focused on the development and management phases of services. Because of their lack of material consistency, services had not been considered by designers as part of their competences. Finally, after many years, designers are realising that they have a role in designing services. The most interesting thing, though is to understand which role they can have.
Several designers point at the emotional or aesthetic aspects of service design; in order to support users’ participation services have involved users’ emotions and feelings.
Interaction designers pointed at the front office component of services: the point in which the service production system meets the users.
Engineers, and I’m mainly working with them, are emphasising the need for a systemic view of services. In this case designing services means making sure that the front office part, with the interaction and emotional components they imply, match with an appropriate organisation in the back office. This last area is the one on which I’m investing more time on.

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

In the last few months I read several interesting project on service design, mainly located in UK, where there seems to be a very favourable environment for the development of new knowledge in this area. However I still think that one of the most interesting contributions to service design has been provided by a project that is now a bit dated, the EU-Funded HiCS project. The reason why I see that project as a sort of milestone in service design is that the project was pointing at a second phase of service design. The first phase has been to develop good cases of service design. Those cases were developed as individual cases, they were related to specific contexts and specific users. At this stage service design was quite similar to a sort of craftsmanship, because each solution was individual and each project was very much dependent on the sensitivity of the service designer. The second phase, I think, is in the need to lift services design at the level of an industrial activity. As such, service design should consider how the actors in a service design system could transfer solutions, knowledge, capabilities, products and services across different local contexts and for different individual users. This phase also introduced the concept of Solution Architecture and Modular Platforms, that inspired my recent work.

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

After the HiCS project, I haven’t seen too much work focusing on this second phase of service design. The industrialisation of services is an important passage to evolve service design from the craftsmanship domain.

The whole area of service design as an experience is also interesting, there are several contributions in this area, but I would like to see more of that.

An interesting research area that is being developed now is the area of representation of services. I proposed this theme long time ago and designers seemed to be not interested in this. The assumption was that traditional product designers are already very good in representing any kind of solution, but in fact services include factors, such as time, experience, interaction, that designers do not know how to represent. Furthermore the need to involve users, any kind of users, even those who are not used to read drawings, calls for a wider investigation on how service design could be represented.
Finally I believe that the area in which service design is having more interesting development is Public Services. Here I would definitely see research on how designers fit in the picture and how can service design contribute to improve the quality of public services and the level of citizens’ participation.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

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

In this blog several interesting contributions have been offered by designers, but I would like to involve some politician, too. E.g. some member of the UK parliament that has worked on service design, or some politician that can see the need to properly design services.

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

Is service design boring? I was asked this question when I argued for service design to pay attention not just to the front office/emotional part of the service interaction, but also to the back office/organisational part.

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

The projects I’m currently involved in are revolving around practicing service designers involved in development or innovation projects with service organizations. The overarching interests that direct my work are methods and techniques for design of dynamic design material, user involvement and user-driven methods, conceptions of value-in-use, the expressiveness of design visualizations, investing in design and innovation, and strategic management issues relating to design of services.

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

It’s quite a challenge to think of the least interesting aspect of Service Design. I was first thinking of tourism – but it is a large area and sometimes in great need of design. Then I was thinking of the transition from products to services – but functional sales and after-markets are so important concepts for businesses that putting these aside seems impossible.

So, let’s talk about the interesting parts. After doing research in interaction design focused on how interaction design can be integrated into IT-system acquisition processes, the figure of thought brought forward by service design introduced a means for connecting design with business. The way that service design connects with business thinking is attractive.

It is also exciting that the design of services is all about the design of value-in-use. It has been one line of thinking in interaction design, but in service design it becomes an even more absolute perspective.

And then there is all the visuals and models used. Even though there are the ordinary ones, like blueprints or journeys, I’m fascinated by the odd ones, and by the ones that makes you go “yes, I see!”

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

We are running two larger projects at the moment, one with service innovations, and one with service development. In both projects we have set up a co-production team, with designers, service organizations and researchers.

In the ICE project, http://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/research/ICE/, we have been working with distributed home-health care and future mobile communication. We have been using theories and methods from Cognitive Systems Engineering to expand and understand how blueprinting and journeys could support innovation in hone health-care situations. We have also explored how expressive design techniques in different media support each other when describing future services.

In the SERV project, http://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/research/SERV/, we have been working with more traditional service development projects, developing knowledge about user research techniques, use of ethnographic methods, and constructs that help describe what the design object of service design can be.

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

Definitely. There is a fantastic opportunity, when the large western economies turn around at the bottom, to gain understanding of how service and design thinking contributes to sustainable growth, or maybe even slow growth. Then, of course, one should look into informal service economies, and the role of design, individualization, innovation, sensemaking, etc.

And last, for now, there is a need for extending our understanding of service phenomena by establishing firm grounding in relevant theoretical concepts and philosophy.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

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

I would like to invite Tuuli Mattelmäki, Kirsikka Vaajakallio, Shelley Evenson and Johan Redström

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

How does service design co-evolve with the service sciences?

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

For the past 10 years I have been working  in different social design projects: developing craft production in Lapland, Namibia, Caucasus area with EU and World Bank funding. Lately I have been working to innovate service based products related to tourism industry linking tourism with the creative industries.

My research work took a new direction when I started to work in autumn 2007 in a new research project called “Experiencing Wellbeing – New Service Platforms and Mobile User Interfaces for Leisure” funded by Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. During this project  I have been focusing my research on developing service design methods to be applied  with technology-based and service businesses. This research project has been extremely interesting, allowing me to  go deeper in the world of service design and opening up soon new possibilities for research as the project progresses.

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

I think that the most interesting aspect of Service Design is its user orientation and the possibility to innovate both through the development of new kind of service products and service models; exploring for example how services can be co-produced within the user community. As a researcher and as a designer, I’m enjoying the possibility to develop and reflect on new methods to work with users and to visualize and reflect on the design process itself. This user orientation is a key ingredient for Service Design to deal with relevant contemporary social issues.

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

I’m currently working in a two year research project called “Experiencing Wellbeing – New Service Platforms and Mobile User Interfaces for Leisure”. The aim of the project is to develop service design methods to generate new solutions to enhance wellbeing, developing product applications with companies such as Hudle Oyj, Nokia Oyj, Kunnonpaikka and Kuopio Tourism, and developing Service Design capabilities for the Region. We have developed four product applications and tested prototypes of the services. You can learn more about these cases reading the publication: Designing Services with Innovative Methods. The business cases outcome are still confidential but we have developed new tools and knowledge that revealed to be critical for our Region and SMEs. Our next task is to produce a working book on Service Design in Finnish language to be used by SMEs and public instititions.

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

I’m working on a research proposal on service design to generate new models for Public Services in our Region. In this research area I would like to co-operate with organizations and researchers that have been already involved in these kind of projects. My main interest is on how to develop new ways to produce services that can benefit the society while enhancing personal wellbeing. For this reason I am interested to connect Service Design with the existing area of Social Design.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

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

I would like invite  Aare van Oosterom from Designthinkers. I think it’s good to include doers from the field to the academic discussions.

I recommend also to link with REDJOTTER

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

My concern is that we recognize our common roots in Design Research and have enough space for free thinking instead of relying on very specific definitions. How do we manage to maintain this openness?