Service design
Encyclopedia
Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers.
The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers. The backbone of this process is to understand the behavior of the customers, their needs and motivations.
Service designers draw on the methodologies of fields such as ethnography and journalism to gather customer insights through interviews and by shadowing service users. Many observations are synthesized to generate concepts and ideas that are typically portrayed visually, for example in sketches or service prototypes.
Service design may inform changes to an existing service or creation of new services.
and management
disciplines. Shostack (Shostack 1982), for instance proposed the integrated design of material components (products) and immaterial components (services). This design process, according to Shostack, can be documented and codified using a “service blueprint
” to map the sequence of events in a service and its essential functions in an objective and explicit manner.
In 1991, service design was first introduced as a design discipline by Prof. Dr. Michael Erlhoff at Köln International School of Design
(KISD), and Prof. Birgit Mager has played an integral role for developing the study of service design at KISD
in later days. In 2001, live|work, the first service design consultancy opened for business in London. In 2004, the Service Design Network was launched by Köln International School of Design
, Carnegie Mellon University
, Linköpings Universitet, Politecnico di Milano and Domus Academy in order to create an international network for service design academics and professionals; now the network extends to service design professionals worldwide as well as design consultancies who have started offering service design. In 2010, 23 service design professionals published the first comprehensive textbook This is Service Design Thinking, edited by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider.
Service design can be both tangible and intangible. It can involve artifacts and other things including communication, environment and behaviours.
Several authors (Eiglier 1979; Normann 2000; Morelli 2002), though, emphasize that, unlike products, which are created and “exist” before being purchased and used, service come to existence at the same moment they are being provided and used. While a designer can prescribe the exact configuration of a product, s/he cannot prescribe in the same way the result of the interaction between customers and service providers, nor can s/he prescribe the form and characteristics of any emotional value produced by the service.
Consequently, service design is an activity that suggests behavioural patterns or “scripts” to the actors interacting in the service, leaving a higher level of freedom to the customers’ behaviour.
An overview of the methodologies for designing services is proposed by (Morelli 2006), who proposes three main directions:
• Identification of the actors involved in the definition of the service, using appropriate analytical tools
• Definition of possible service scenarios, verifying use cases, sequences of actions and actors’ role, in order to define the requirements for the service and its logical and organizational structure
• Representation of the service, using techniques that illustrate all the components of the service, including physical elements, interactions, logical links and temporal sequences
Analytical tools refer to anthropology
, social studies
, ethnography
and social construction of technology
. Appropriate elaborations of those tools have been proposed with video-ethnography (Buur, Binder et al. 2000; Buur and Soendergaard 2000), and different observation techniques to gather data about users’ behaviour (Kumar 2004) . Other methods, such as cultural probes, have been developed in the design discipline, which aim at capturing information on customers in their context of use (Gaver, Dunne et al. 1999; Lindsay and Rocchi 2003).
Design tools aim at producing a blueprint
of the service, which describes the nature and characteristics of the interaction in the service. Design tools include service scenarios (which describe the interaction) and use cases (which illustrate the detail of time sequences in a service encounter). Both techniques are already used in software and systems engineering
to capture the functional requirements
of a system. However, when used in service design, they have been adequately adapted, in order to include more information, concerning material and immaterial component of a service, time sequences and physical flows (Morelli 2006). Other techniques, such as IDEF0
, just in time
and Total quality management
are used to produce functional models of the service system and to control its processes. Such tools, though, may prove too rigid to describe services in which customers are supposed to have an active role, because of the high level of uncertainty related to the customer’s behaviour.
Representation techniques are critical in service design, because of the need to communicate the inner mechanisms of services to actors, such as final users, which are not supposed to be familiar with any technical language or representation technique. For this reason storyboards are often used to illustrate the interaction on the front office
. Other representation techniques have been used to illustrate the system of interactions or a “platform” in a service (Manzini, Collina et al. 2004). Recently, video sketching and video prototypes have also been used to produce quick and effective tools to stimulate customers’ participation in the development of the service and their involvement in the value production process.
, initially as part of the activities related to web design
and interaction design
, and later as an autonomous professional and research area.
Some recent documents of the British government (United Kingdom Prime Minister Strategy Unit 2007; Public Administration Select Committee, 2008) explore the concept of "user-driven public services" and scenarios of highly personalized public services. The documents propose a new view on the role of service providers and users in the development of new and highly customised public services.
This view has been explored by recent works of the and in the initiative in UK. In those works and in of redesign of public services, the approach has been based on users’ participation
and active interaction with the service. The new approach has been illustrated by several authors.
Clinical service redesign is an approach to improving quality and productivity in health. A redesign is clinically led and involves all stakeholders (e.g. Primary and secondary care clinicians, senior management, patients, commissioners etc) to ensure national and local clinical standards are set and communicated across the care settings. By following the patient's journey or pathway, the team can focus on improving the patient experience and outcomes of care.
By The New Zealand Inland Revenue Department has a dedicated Design & Project Management group, with separate streams focusing on government, customers and specialist policy design. Specific design methodologies have been adopted and are being continuously developed.
Other successful and evident examples are in the cases of augmenting the museum experience with mobile devices that explain to you a bit more about each work. We must say however that many of those interfaces are just speakers and that the content is very very poor.
For all this reasons we can say that any type of design today, particularly the ones using technology is very much to do with content.
It is true however that the consumer perspective needs to be integrated since the early stages of the design process. To achieve new processes of multidisciplinary and participatory work may be used, through prototype testing or performance analysis.
In 2011, DJCAD at the University of Dundee in Scotland introduced a postgraduate degree in Design for Services. Master of Design for Services.
The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers. The backbone of this process is to understand the behavior of the customers, their needs and motivations.
Service designers draw on the methodologies of fields such as ethnography and journalism to gather customer insights through interviews and by shadowing service users. Many observations are synthesized to generate concepts and ideas that are typically portrayed visually, for example in sketches or service prototypes.
Service design may inform changes to an existing service or creation of new services.
History of service design
In the earliest contributions on service design (Shostack 1982; Shostack 1984), the activity of designing service was considered as part of the domain of marketingMarketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
and management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
disciplines. Shostack (Shostack 1982), for instance proposed the integrated design of material components (products) and immaterial components (services). This design process, according to Shostack, can be documented and codified using a “service blueprint
Blueprint
A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....
” to map the sequence of events in a service and its essential functions in an objective and explicit manner.
In 1991, service design was first introduced as a design discipline by Prof. Dr. Michael Erlhoff at Köln International School of Design
Köln international school of design
The Köln International School of Design is an institution of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and offers an interdisciplinary study program in the field of design...
(KISD), and Prof. Birgit Mager has played an integral role for developing the study of service design at KISD
Köln international school of design
The Köln International School of Design is an institution of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and offers an interdisciplinary study program in the field of design...
in later days. In 2001, live|work, the first service design consultancy opened for business in London. In 2004, the Service Design Network was launched by Köln International School of Design
Köln international school of design
The Köln International School of Design is an institution of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and offers an interdisciplinary study program in the field of design...
, Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, Linköpings Universitet, Politecnico di Milano and Domus Academy in order to create an international network for service design academics and professionals; now the network extends to service design professionals worldwide as well as design consultancies who have started offering service design. In 2010, 23 service design professionals published the first comprehensive textbook This is Service Design Thinking, edited by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider.
Characteristics of service design
Service design is the specification and construction of technologically networked social practices that deliver valuable capacities for action to a particular customer. Capacity for action in Information Services has the basic form of assertions. In Health Services, it has the basic form of diagnostic assessments and prescriptions (commands). In Educational Services, it has the form of a promise to produce a new capacity for the customer to make new promises. In a fundamental way, services are unambiguously tangible. Companies such as eBay, or collectives such as Wikipedia or Sourceforge are rich and sophisticated combinations of basic linguistic deliverables that expand customers' capacities to act and produce value for themselves and for others. In an abstract sense, services are networked intelligence.Service design can be both tangible and intangible. It can involve artifacts and other things including communication, environment and behaviours.
Several authors (Eiglier 1979; Normann 2000; Morelli 2002), though, emphasize that, unlike products, which are created and “exist” before being purchased and used, service come to existence at the same moment they are being provided and used. While a designer can prescribe the exact configuration of a product, s/he cannot prescribe in the same way the result of the interaction between customers and service providers, nor can s/he prescribe the form and characteristics of any emotional value produced by the service.
Consequently, service design is an activity that suggests behavioural patterns or “scripts” to the actors interacting in the service, leaving a higher level of freedom to the customers’ behaviour.
Service design methodology
Together with the most traditional methods used for product design, service design requires methods and tools to control new elements of the design process, such as the time and the interaction between actors.An overview of the methodologies for designing services is proposed by (Morelli 2006), who proposes three main directions:
• Identification of the actors involved in the definition of the service, using appropriate analytical tools
• Definition of possible service scenarios, verifying use cases, sequences of actions and actors’ role, in order to define the requirements for the service and its logical and organizational structure
• Representation of the service, using techniques that illustrate all the components of the service, including physical elements, interactions, logical links and temporal sequences
Analytical tools refer to anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, social studies
Social studies
Social studies is the "integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence," as defined by the American National Council for the Social Studies...
, ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
and social construction of technology
Social construction of technology
Social construction of technology is a theory within the field of Science and Technology Studies. Advocates of SCOT -- that is, social constructivists -- argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology...
. Appropriate elaborations of those tools have been proposed with video-ethnography (Buur, Binder et al. 2000; Buur and Soendergaard 2000), and different observation techniques to gather data about users’ behaviour (Kumar 2004) . Other methods, such as cultural probes, have been developed in the design discipline, which aim at capturing information on customers in their context of use (Gaver, Dunne et al. 1999; Lindsay and Rocchi 2003).
Design tools aim at producing a blueprint
Blueprint
A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....
of the service, which describes the nature and characteristics of the interaction in the service. Design tools include service scenarios (which describe the interaction) and use cases (which illustrate the detail of time sequences in a service encounter). Both techniques are already used in software and systems engineering
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...
to capture the functional requirements
Functional requirements
In software engineering, a functional requirement defines a function of a software system or its component. A function is described as a set of inputs, the behavior, and outputs ....
of a system. However, when used in service design, they have been adequately adapted, in order to include more information, concerning material and immaterial component of a service, time sequences and physical flows (Morelli 2006). Other techniques, such as IDEF0
IDEF0
IDEF0 is a function modeling methodology for describing manufacturing functions, which offers a functional modeling language for the analysis, development, reengineering, and integration of information systems; business processes; or software engineering analysis.IDEF0 is part of the IDEF family...
, just in time
Just In Time
Just in time is a production strategy that strives to improve a business return on investment by reducing in-process inventory and associated carrying costs. Just-in-time production method is also called the Toyota Production System...
and Total quality management
Total Quality Management
Total quality management or TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes....
are used to produce functional models of the service system and to control its processes. Such tools, though, may prove too rigid to describe services in which customers are supposed to have an active role, because of the high level of uncertainty related to the customer’s behaviour.
Representation techniques are critical in service design, because of the need to communicate the inner mechanisms of services to actors, such as final users, which are not supposed to be familiar with any technical language or representation technique. For this reason storyboards are often used to illustrate the interaction on the front office
Front office
Front office is a business term that refers to a company's departments that come in contact with clients, including the marketing, sales, and service departments...
. Other representation techniques have been used to illustrate the system of interactions or a “platform” in a service (Manzini, Collina et al. 2004). Recently, video sketching and video prototypes have also been used to produce quick and effective tools to stimulate customers’ participation in the development of the service and their involvement in the value production process.
Service design in marketing and management
The active participation of customers and other actors traditionally considered as external to a firm’s boundary emphasize the need for a proper design activity that organizes the interaction among those actors, thus planning sequences of events, material and information flows. Furthermore the involvement of “non technical “ actors, such as customers, implies that the activity of service design be analyzed not only from a functional perspective (with the aim of optimizing flows and resources and reducing time of operations) but also from the emotional perspective (creating meaningful events, motivating customers, communicating the service). Because of those considerations service design became the focus of studies and research in the discipline of designDesign
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
, initially as part of the activities related to web design
Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
and interaction design
Interaction design
In design, human–computer interaction, and software development, interaction design, often abbreviated IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Like many other design fields interaction design also has an interest in form but its main...
, and later as an autonomous professional and research area.
Service design in the public sector
In the last few years, the public sector has expanded, with new investments in hospitals, schools, cultural institutions and security infrastructures. The number of jobs in public services has also grown. Such growth is also associated to a large and rapid social change, that is calling for a re-organization of the welfare state. In this context governments are explicitly considering service design for the re-organisation of public services.Some recent documents of the British government (United Kingdom Prime Minister Strategy Unit 2007; Public Administration Select Committee, 2008) explore the concept of "user-driven public services" and scenarios of highly personalized public services. The documents propose a new view on the role of service providers and users in the development of new and highly customised public services.
This view has been explored by recent works of the and in the initiative in UK. In those works and in of redesign of public services, the approach has been based on users’ participation
Coproduction of public services by service users and communities
The Coproduction of public services is the production of public services through the equal and reciprocal contribution of service users, communities and professionals, making use of their pooled resources, expertise and willingness to improve service processes and outcomes...
and active interaction with the service. The new approach has been illustrated by several authors.
Clinical service redesign is an approach to improving quality and productivity in health. A redesign is clinically led and involves all stakeholders (e.g. Primary and secondary care clinicians, senior management, patients, commissioners etc) to ensure national and local clinical standards are set and communicated across the care settings. By following the patient's journey or pathway, the team can focus on improving the patient experience and outcomes of care.
By The New Zealand Inland Revenue Department has a dedicated Design & Project Management group, with separate streams focusing on government, customers and specialist policy design. Specific design methodologies have been adopted and are being continuously developed.
Service design cases
In the creative sector, as Geke van Dijk mentions “cross-disciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing are powerful catalysts of innovation”. She also explains a new notion defined as “service design’ that expresses that current products are no longer isolated elements, but a network of different experiences and combinations, such as the case of the iPod and iTunes online music store. In this case the concept plays with the idea of tangible and intangible objects that allow consumers maximum flexibility to make their own decision about how and when they want to use the service. In this case, though the example is very interesting, we must also understand that Apple as a company is perhaps one of the most closed and hermetic company, so though the concept is useful to explain how to understand products today, it is also quite ambiguous how companies really deploy them.Other successful and evident examples are in the cases of augmenting the museum experience with mobile devices that explain to you a bit more about each work. We must say however that many of those interfaces are just speakers and that the content is very very poor.
For all this reasons we can say that any type of design today, particularly the ones using technology is very much to do with content.
It is true however that the consumer perspective needs to be integrated since the early stages of the design process. To achieve new processes of multidisciplinary and participatory work may be used, through prototype testing or performance analysis.
Service design education
The first service design education was introduced in 1991 at Köln International School of Design. Several other schools are now proposing service design as the main subject of master studies or as part of the academic curriculum in interaction design or industrial design.In 2011, DJCAD at the University of Dundee in Scotland introduced a postgraduate degree in Design for Services. Master of Design for Services.
Further reading
- Bechmann, Søren (2010): "Servicedesign", Gyldendal Akademisk.
- Buur, J., T. Binder, et al. (2000). "Taking Video beyond "Hard Data" in User Centred Design." Design. Participatory Design Conference (PDC 2000).
- Buur, J. and A. Soendergaard (2000). "Video Card Game: An augmented environment for User Centred Design discussions." Designing Augmented Reality Environments (DARE 2000), Helsingør.
- Eiglier, P., Langeard,P (1977). Marketing Consumer Services: New Insights. Cambridge, Mass. Marketing Science Institute, 1977. 128 P.
- Gaver B., Dunne T., Pacenti E., (1999). "Design: Cultural Probes." Interaction 6(1): 21–29.
- Hollins, G., Hollins, Bill (1991). Total Design : Managing the design process in the service sector. London, Pitman.
- Kumar, V. (2004). User Insights Tool: a sharable database for user research. Chicago, Design Institute at IIT.
- Leadbeater, C. and H. Cottam (2008). The User Generated State: Public Services 2.0.
- Lindsay, C. and S. Rocchi (2003). "'Highly Customerised Solutions' – The Context of Use Co-Research Methodology". Innovating for Sustainability. 11th International Conference of Greening of Industry Network, San Francisco.
- Manzini, E., L. Collina, et al. (2004). Solution Oriented Partnership. How to Design Industrialised Sustainable Solutions. Cranfield, Cranfield University. European Commission GROWTH Programme.
- Morelli, N. (2006). "Developing new PSS, Methodologies and Operational Tools." Journal of Cleaner Production 14(17): 1495–1501.
- Morelli, N. (2002). "Designing product/service systems. A methodological exploration." Design Issues 18(3): 3–17.
- Normann, R. (2000). Service management : strategy and leadership in service business. Chichester ; New York, Wiley.
- Normann, R. and R. Ramirez (1994). Desiging Interactive Strategy. From Value Chain to Value Constellation. New York, John Wiley and Sons.
- Parker, S. and J. Heapy (2006). The Journey to the Interface – How public service design can connect users to reform, Demos.
- Public Administration Select Committee (2008). User Invovment in Public Services, House of Commons: 37.
- Ramaswamy, R. (1996). Design and management of service processes. Reading, Mass., Addison–Wesley Pub. Co.
- Shostack, L. G. (1982). "How to Design a Service." European Journal of Marketing 16(1): 49–63.
- Shostack, L. G. (1984). "Design Services that Deliver." Harvard Business Review(84115): 133-139.
- Stickdorn, M. and Schneider, J. (2010). This is Service Design Thinking. Amsterdam, BIS Publishers.
- United Kingdom Prime Minister Strategy Unit (2007). http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/policy_review/public_services/index.asp. HM Government Policy Review, Government of United Kingdom.
- de Reuver, M.; Bouwman, H.; Haaker, T.: Mobile business models: organizational and financial design issues that matter, in: Electronic Markets, 19, 1, 2009, pp. 3–13.
- van de Kar, E.; den Hengst, M.: Involving users early on in the design process: closing the gap between mobile information services and their users, in: Electronic Markets, 19, 1, 2009, pp. 31–42.
External links
- Service Design Network Service Design Network: International Service Design Network
- Sedes Research Sedes Research: Center for Service Design Research
- Interaction and Service design research group Service design research projects at Linköpings universitet.
- Design Council on Service Design Design Council one stop shop information resource on Service Design.
- Service Design at KISD Service Design Program at Köln International School of Design
- sustainable everyday examples on the use of scenario and video prototypes in service design.
- Service Design at DJCAD, University of Dundee ]
- Product / Service Design at Glasgow School of Art
- Politecnico di Milano
- Service Design Program at Savannah College of Art and Design
See also
- Customer experienceCustomer experienceCustomer experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier. From awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, purchase, use, cultivation and advocacy...
- customer serviceCustomer serviceCustomer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.According to Turban et al. , “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer...
- Service RecoveryService RecoveryThe service recovery paradox is a famous paradox that relates to customer satisfaction with and without a product failure. It states that with a highly effective service recovery, a service or product failure offers a chance to achieve higher satisfaction ratings from customers than if the failure...
- Enterprise ArchitectureEnterprise architectureAn enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...
- managed servicesManaged servicesManaged services is the practice of transferring day-to-day related management responsibility as a strategic method for improved effective and efficient operations inclusive of Production Support and lifecycle build/maintenance activities...
- product service systemProduct service systemA product-service system , also known as a function-oriented business model, is a business model, developed in academia, that is aimed at providing sustainability of both consumption and production.- What is PSS? :...
- service (economics)
- service economyService economyService economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. One is the increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. Services account for a higher percentage of US GDP than 20 years ago...
- service managementService managementService management is integrated into supply chain management as the joint between the actual sales and the customer. The aim of high performance service management is to optimize the service-intensive supply chains, which are usually more complex than the typical finished-goods supply chain...
- services marketingServices marketingServices marketing is a sub field of marketing, which can be split into the two main areas of goods marketing and services marketing...
- service providerService providerA service provider is an entity that provides services to other entities. Usually, this refers to a business that provides subscription or web service to other businesses or individuals. Examples of these services include Internet access, Mobile phone operators, and web application hosting...
- Service Science, Management and EngineeringService Science, Management and EngineeringService science, management, and engineering is a term introduced by IBM to describe service science, an interdisciplinary approach to the study, design, and implementation of services systems – complex systems in which specific arrangements of people and technologies take actions that provide...
- service systemService systemA service system is a configuration of technology and organizational networks designed to deliver services that satisfy the needs, wants, or aspirations of customers.- Scope of the term :...
- systemSystemSystem is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
- service science
- User experienceUser experienceUser experience is the way a person feels about using a product, system or service. User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership, but it also includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such...
- Interaction designInteraction designIn design, human–computer interaction, and software development, interaction design, often abbreviated IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Like many other design fields interaction design also has an interest in form but its main...
- Design thinkingDesign thinkingDesign Thinking refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning fields...