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

My goal is to develop a scientific understanding of design. Most of my work has been devoted to product design, but services offer new challenges.  I co-direct an MBA / Engineering dual degree program focussed upon design and operations: services are almost pure operations, with a human interface. I find that many of the principles of interactive design apply directly to services. But what seems to be lacking is an attention to emotion and experience both on the part of the customer and also the internal people – the staff. That is where my work is moving.

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

Most interesting: The Service Blueprint provides a compelling way of illustrating the complex intermix of layers involved in services. But it is limited: it needs to cover more.

Second most interesting: Services are recursive. There is a front stage and a backstage, but the backstage consists of a front stage and a backstage.

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

Just published a paper in the MIT Sloan Management Review on The Psychology of Waiting Lines (updating the earlier work for the 21^st century) – except that SMR renamed the article “Designing waits that work.”  (For a copy of the paper — and a larger, more theoretical essay — email me at don at jnd.org.)

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

Emotions and user-experience in service design.