interviews
The industrialisation of services
25th January 2010School of Architecture and Design, Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
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.