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?

As a Product designer and a member of the faculty of Industrial Design at the National Institute of Design, one of the premier design institute in India, I have been teaching across various disciplines, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Over the last six years, realizing the economic shift from the product economy to the service economy, I have developed a course module on ‘Service Design’ that is offered to the PG students of NID’s Strategic design Management.
The module aims to introduce the students to the concept of service and to the opportunities for design in the service domain. The exposure to Service Design has opened up a new carrier opportunity for these students to explore. Also through the course we have been able to explore the design intervention opportunities that exist within the ‘unorganised’ service sectors.

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

Service connects at the humane level; it intends to approach the user’s need/s directly thereby eliminating and/or reducing further intervention/inclusion/introduction of products or any other tangible aspects. In the context of India and other developing and thickly populated countries, services offer great opportunity for employment at the individual level, utilizing the person’s existing skills, resources and the availability of time. It thus helps individuals to gain economic independence and confidence. Services are generally low on investments and help connect people at individual level. Services therefore have the great scope to connect people at the societal level.
Service and design thus converge at the common aspect of human interface, and through this can improve the quality of life. Design interventions for services would thereby also help attaining sustainable development.

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

The research projects undertaken by the Politecnico di Milano, in Italy, under the mentorship of Prof. Ezio Manzini were quite useful for me to generate interests in this domain. Also various services that exist in India and within its culture helped me further understand and respect its strengths for sustainable economic development of a large nation like India. Some of which are documented in my paper here:
http://www.shashankmehta.com/Research%20Papers%20pdfs/Services%20that%20sustain.pdf

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

While, through the course module we have been able to understand the opportunities that exist in the ‘unorganised’ service sectors in the country, developing useful design solutions for these kinds of organisations, I think that there is still the need to develop a systematic approach for this kind of design intervention.
Services, that are generally pursued by industries, aim to improve their customer relationship and the service interface, while the ones that I am talking about here, are largely part of a not formalised economy that utilizes limited skills and resources to offer employment opportunities at the individual level. A research project to document various examples of such typology of services has been planned. This research will be useful to analyse and gain further insights and understandings from the design perspective..

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

I started to deal with service design more than 15 years ago. The main driver of this interest, at that time, was my research on design for sustainability. In particular, the hypothesis was that the shift form products to services could result in (more) sustainable ways of producing and consuming.

Today, after many years of experiences, we are far less naïve and we know that the shift towards services is not, per se, a guarantee of moving in the “right direction”. Never the less, it remains, and now it has been proved, that service design is, or could be, a powerful tool to promote sustainable changes.

In parallel with these experiences on the crossroad between services and sustainability, I collaborate to promote the research on Service Design in my Department and, in particular, in its Doctorate. This long story has a main line of research on the same Service Design nature, that started with the Elena Pacenti’s thesis (more than 10 years ago) and continued with the Daniela Sangiorgi’s and Carla Cipolla’s ones. Other important contributions came form several other researchers crossing service design with other topics (as Nicola Morelli and Simona Maschi, at the intersection with strategic design, Beatrice Villari and Giulia Gerosa, at the one with local development, and Miaosen Gong and Joon Sang Baek, at the one with digital and mobile platforms).

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

Service Design deals with “interactions”: interactions between different actors who collaborate in generating a commonly recognized value. Interactions between human beings, and between them and a variety of objects and places. For this reason, Service Design situates itself at the core of a new, emerging paradigm: a way to consider wellbeing and production, where interactions substitute objects (not because objects disappear, but because they take the status of “material evidences” of interaction systems).

The shift form products to services is not a new phenomenon. But in the most recent period, the diffusion of networked systems of production, consumption and social organisation makes this phenomenon even more important: in the networked systems all the links between different actors are “service relationships”. At the same time, the networked systems diffusion asks us to up-date our ideas on services, moving form the traditional one (asymmetrical interactions between service providers and service users) towards a new one (more symmetrical, networked relationships between service co-producers)..

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

In the past 10 years I have been directly or indirectly involved in several projects dealing with Service Design. Given that I work in the university they were mainly design research activities based on concrete projects (i.e. they were “action researches” on service design and sustainability). Here I will outline two recent ones that for me are particularly meaningful:

1. Enabling solution for a co-housing program. The aim of this project has been to facilitate the community building and the co-design of shared spaces and services in residential developments. The initiative, developed with a social entrepreneur, has been successful and generated a social enterprise that now is active in the co-housing promotion in the Milanese area.

2. Digital services for social innovation. The aim of this project has been to verify the potentialities of digital services in supporting creative communities and collaborative services. The project has been articulated in two parts with two main interlocutors: Telecom Italia, for mobile-based services, and Ethical Bank Foundation, for services to be hosted by a digital platform. 

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

There are several lines of research that could be interesting and promising. I will outline here only three possible themes:

Relational quality. It is the quality that makes services living entities: systems where human being can interact in a lively way (as oppose to what happens in those “designed services” where everything is planned and human relationships disappear). This kind of quality is challenging because it cannot be designed. But nevertheless, the hypothesis of work of this research program is that, through a good design, the relational quality conditions of existence can be made more probable.

Collaborative quality. It is the organisational quality that makes services social entities: organisations where the involved actors collaborate in order to get a desired result and, doing so, to generate socialisation (as a kind of positive side-effect).  This service quality is important because it characterises flexible, effective, customised and economically cheaper services (offering viable solutions to present, huge social problems) and, as I wrote in a previous paragraph, because it generates the precious side-effect of strengthening the social fabric.

Social network and everyday life. Collaborative organisation, supported by digital services, can bridge the immaterial world (of the social networks) and physical one (of the everyday life problems). In this perspective, information and communication technologies are the enabling technologies for brand forms of organisation and Service design can do a lot to make it happen. And to make it happen in the best way (i.e. promoting social and environmental sustainability). 

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Your suggestions for the blog:

Who would you like to invite in this conversation about Service Design Research?
Michel Bauwens, p2p foundation

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

If we agree that the contemporary society is generating a growing demand of services, in order to avoid to transform the world in a huge, unsustaianble theme park, the resulting service-oriented environments have to be endowed with a high degree of living relational and collaborative qualities. How to design these living relationships? That is: how to design for a quality that, per se, cannot be planned?

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

Our societies are unsustainable because we are too materials intense; we make too little use of too many things that disperse useful resources and energy sources. So to become more sustainable we must increase the service intensity of our stuff – more use, more uses, more users. This is more of a social change challenge than a technical change challenge.  It is the challenge of service design, of designing stable yet flexible (commercial or non-commercial) interactions between people that allow them to get more use out of products, environments and technologies that they share. It is a challenge because the 20^th century sold most nations on the idea that owning things gives people autonomy, by which was meant, autonomy from other people. This is why it is a design challenge – because services need to be designed in ways that make interacting with people more desirable again. This is also why service design is a social change project, one of advocacy and activism, actively creating new markets, even new economies, rather than merely tolerating and reforming our existing unsustainable market economies.

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

Service design cannot avoid that at its very heart is ‘taking on a role.’ Friends (and family) take care of you and your needs because they love you. Businesses take care of you and your needs because they can make money by doing so. Somewhere in the middle are communities on the one hand and service providers on the other. This means that no matter how well-designed a service, in the end, the quality of the service depends on the extent to which someone (the ‘front-line service provider’) can be encouraged/facilitated to care for the needs of a stranger (and on the extent to which that ‘stranger’ can be encouraged/facilitated to let themselves be cared for by a ‘service provider’). Pine and Gilmour are right that what is at issue in service economies is ‘theater vs authenticity,’ but they are wrong to distinguish these qualities from the provision of service (in order to commodify them). Which is why the Service Design bible is not ‘The Experience Economy’ but Zuboff and Maxmin’s ‘The Support Economy.’ Or to be more frank, this is why all service design is unavoidably political.

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

I am currently doing ‘service design’ for internal clients – my university. There is firstly a ‘branding-led’ service design project for a new environmental studies degree. As an interdisciplinary program, students need to be provided with ways of negotiating the different divisions of the university in order to access their curriculum. Wherever possible the ‘back-office’ is restructured to facilitate the student experience, but as such restructuring opportunities are rare, much of the project involves creating maps, tools and services that allow the students to more effectively navigate their way through the institution as it currently exists. Crucial to this is an overlaid place-branding that gives the students real world correlates for their journeys. An important added-value has been providing these environmental studies students with an empowered identity, one that draws on their ‘special knowledge’ of how to tactically traverse complex organizations. Another project is thinking about the service design of online learning. The similarity with the first project is that online learning is no longer about off-the-shelf one-package-does-it-all walled-gardens. It is now about a diversity of proprietary and open-source software and social networks. Consequently, students need to be given locational devices, identities and constant trouble-shooting services, whether customized, peer-to-peer or FAQ-based. I’ve come to realize that e-learning can only truly come of age through the lens of service design.

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

As Dolores Hayden documents in The Grand Domestic Revolution, late 19^th century USA saw a proliferation of product-service system innovations. These centred on outsourcing private domestic production – food production, clothing care, child care, etc – to collectives. One of the most iconic examples comes from King C Gillette, who may have bequeathed to the 20^th century the unsustainable economy of disposability, but who actually wanted to bequeath to the future aggregated and therefore more efficient domestic service industries. Hayden describes the convergence that led to these initiatives: the arrival of technological innovations that worked best at scale (steam-power), and the socio-political changes that discouraged domestic servants whilst wanting to liberate bourgeois women from isolated domestic labour, as well as a bit of utopian socialism. I would love to research more closely this ‘road not taken’ of product-service systems that nearly prevented high eco-impacting household activities from disappearing into private and therefore resistant-to-change kitchens and laundries. It is crucial that service design not think of itself as brand new and unprecedented. Historical maturity is essential if the kinds of more sustainable service systems now being proposed are not to suffer the same fate as these late 19^th century innovations.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

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

Lara Penin, Assistant Professor of Transdisciplinary Design, School of Design Strategies, Parsons the New School of Design 

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

What organizational psychology knowledge is necessary for service design?