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Service Design - a conceptualization of an emerging practiceKatarina Wetter Edman

Licentiate thesis


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Service Design -

a conceptualisation of an emerging practice

Katarina Wetter Edman


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Service Design -

a conceptualization of an emerging practice

Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg


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Acknowledgements

I resisted as long as I could, not seeing mysel as a scholarly person. I was (and

still am) a designer yet there was someone more persistent than me. Now,some six to seven years afer the first persuasive attempts, I am very happy to be

part o academia. Te person I have to thank or this is Proessor Ulla Johansson.

I also thank you, Ulla, or opening doors or me in an almost entirely new world

and sharing both proessional and personal experiences.

Ulla has been my main supervisor at Business and Design Lab, and an anchor

to HDK-School o Design and Crafs in Gothenburg where my PhD is located.In addition, I have had two secondary supervisors. One is Assistant Proes-sor Stean Holmlid at Linkping University, whom I met or the first time inLinkping almost years ago. Tank you, Stean, or your personal supportand guidance, or asking straightorward questions, and sharing reely o yourscientific and proessional experience. Also, or being my saeguard against get-

ting lost in the border county o the HCI discourse. And second, but not least,Assistant Proessor Peter Magnusson, who has been close to my physical loca-tion, the Service Research Center in Karlstad. Tank you, Peter, or supporting

me on a daily basis by sharing your scientific knowledge and or your calm way

o asking questions and giving me perspectives.

In addition to my official supervisors I am very happy to have had so manypeople around me these first years, and I hope you will bear with me or thecoming years until this PhD phase o my lie is completed. I have had the good

ortune o being part o multiple research groups and communities that allhelped me in different ways in the development o my thoughts and work. Fel-

low doctoral students and aculty at HDK and in the Swedish Faculty or Design

Research and Research Education:D! gave me a base in design research. Tank

you Marcus and Anna or all our discussions, and without Jills deswinglishing

this thesis would have been a more difficult read. My ellow doctoral studentsand senior colleagues at CF, the Service Research Center in Karlstad, have allbeen open to share scientific and personal experiences, which I needed to both

orient mysel well in academia, and to give me complementary perspectives and

a work place.


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Tis research project was made possible by unding rom VINNOVAs pro-gram Service development and service innovation. I was granted financing

through the call Service innovation through increased customer involvement,conducted January through September , Project number -.

Te project was based at Business & Design Lab, BDL, in Gothenburg, Sweden.

BDL is a co-operation between Te School o Arts and Crafs and Te School oBusiness, Economics and Law at University o Gothenburg. I thank VINNOVA

or their financial support, without it this research would not have been pos-sible. In addition I would like to express appreciation to the companies that have

opened their doors or my research project and me.

In addition to proessional and financial support, I would never have made it

through to this point without the support rom my amily and riends. Tis time

a special thanks to Magoo, or our long-lasting riendship and or reading andcommenting on parts o this text: your comments helped me believe that mywork is o interest or someone other than my supervisors and mysel.

I have needed much practical support or sorting out everyday lie: this hasbeen given by my parents Klas and Eva and my in-laws, Maj and Bo. Tank you

or making it possible or omas and me to combine work and amily. I giveextra thanks to my parents, because you always believe in me and support mewherever and in whatever I have decided to go and do. You give me (and the rest

o the amily) an enormous amount o practical support, but not least mentalsupport, thank you! Sara, Ludvig och Alexander: ack r att ni gr mitt liv rik-

are. Stina and Jakob, tack r att ni finns och hjlper mig att bara vara hr och

nu.

omas, you know how much you mean to me. Tank you or being there orour amily and me when I have been absent in mind or body. I could never have

done this without you at my side.

Hackvad, rd o August



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Sammanfattning

itle: Service Design - a conceptualization o an emerging practice

Language: English

Keywords: tjnstedesign, designpraktik, design management, anvndarinvolvering, Service

marketing/management, tjnstedominant logik

ISBN: ----

jnstedesign, r till sin natur tvrvetenskaplig med rtter bde inom design och service

management/marketing tradition. idigare designorskning har rmst baserats p vad en

tjnstedesigner gr och relaterar i liten grad till det mer etablerade service marketing/man-agement omrdet. rots det kade akademiska intresset r utormning av tjnster under det

senaste decenniet saknas det en mer teoretiskt orienterad tjnstedesigndiskurs. Licentiatuppsat-

sen bidrar med kunskap som berikar rstelsen och betydelsen av service marketing/manage-

ment r tjnstedesigndiskursen och vice versa genom att okusera p gemensamma begrepp

ssom anvndarinvolvering och samskapande (co-creation).

Denna teoretiska licentiatuppsats bestr av en huvudtext (Kappa), och tv tidigare pub-

licerade artiklar, kappan positioner artiklarna i ett teoretiskt ramverk. Ramverket r tvr

vetenskapligt och bestr av designorskning med okus p design thinking, tjnstedesign och

design management. Dessa omrden relateras till managementorskning, med srskild inrikt-

ning p service marketing/management, Service-Dominant logic tjnstelogik samt tjnste-

innovation. En tvrvetenskaplig litteraturversikt okuserar p hur anvndarinvolvering

konceptualiserats inom tjnstedesign respektive service management diskurserna.

I kappan utvecklas ven en konceptuell modell r tjnstedesign baserad p beskrivningar

i litteraturen. Modellen beskriver tjnstedesign som en ) tvrvetenskaplig praktik som med

hjlp av ) visualisering & prototyping, och med ) deltagande som medel utvecklar design-

objekt, som rsts som ) transormation, och ) vrdeskapande. jnstedesign beskrivs vidare

som en aktivitet som kontinuerligt rndrar perspektiv och utgngspunkter.

Den rsta artikeln jmr relationen mellan S-D logic och design thinking. Den andra

undersker hur tjnstedesignpraktik baserad i industridesign rhller sig till samskapande ochdesigndriven innovation.

Licentiatuppsatsen visar att det finns ett kompletterande samband mellan service market-

ing/management och tjnstedesign, ramr allt i verktyg och metoder r anvndarnas delak-

tighet och medskapande. Vidare resls att tjnstedesign kan bidra till att realisera tjnste-

logiken - Service-Dominant logic, och att ett tjnsteperspektiv kan bidra till att ppna nya mj-

ligheter r designpraktiken.


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Table of Contents

CHAPER

Introduction: A personal prelude,

or why taking a conceptual approach?

Position o research

Structure and scope o licentiate thesis

Layout o the thesis

CHAPER Design and design practice

he meanings o design

he changing character o the design object

Characteristics o design practice

Relecting on design again

Summary

CHAPER

Te design management area

Short historical tracing

Design management as the management o design

Design management as intersection o design and management

Summary

CHAPER

Service marketing/management

Development o service marketing/management

What does a Serv ice-Dominant logic perspective mean?

Serv ice innovation he concept o design in service research

Summary


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CHAPER

Service design: emergence and directions

Emergence o service design Directions in service design research

hree questions and ive characteristics o ser vice

design practice in literature he model with ive characteristics

Summary

CHAPER

User involvement in service management and service design

User centeredness in design practice

Serv ice design and the idea o co-creation Customer involvement in service management

Relations o service design, service management and the users

Summary

CHAPER

Summary of appended papers:

presentation, contributions and development of thesis

Paper I: Comparing Design hinking with Ser vice-

Dominant logic

Paper II: he Meander Model a metaphor or user

involvement in service design

Relation o papers and development o licentiate

thesis able o appended papers

CHAPER

Contributions & discussion

Adopting a service logic perspect ive: Implications or service

design practice (Serv ice) design practice has potential to realise a service

dominant logic

Serv ice design as continuously repositioning activity

References

Table of Contents


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List of appended papers

Paper I: Wetter-Edman, K. () Comparing Design Tinking with Service-Dominant logic,Research Design Journal, (), -

Paper II:Wetter-Edman, K., & Johansson, U. (, May).Te Meander Model a metaphor or user involvement in service design.In

proceedings o EAD, : th International Conerence o the European

Academy o Design, Te Endless End (pp. -), Porto.


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CHAPTER

Introduction

A personal prelude, or why taking a

conceptual approach?

- Red,said the marketing person responsible or the segment, it must be

red! Red sells best!

- Well no, I think it should be green, I said, looking at the two different pro-

totypes o the toy engines standing at the desk in ront o us.

- Green products always get lef till lastshe said, confident that her argu-

ment would win.

I was having one o my first conflicts as a design manager at a Swedish toycompany. We seemingly discussed the color o a toy, but there was definitelymore to the story.

Tis was my first job afer finishing my Master in Industrial Design. I hadbeen trained in artistic skills such as how to sketch and make prototypes, andpainting and sculpture were large part o the curriculum. I was taught through

practice in a studio setting how to transer this knowledge into the developmento aesthetically pleasing products, and how to question the reason or new pro-

ducts. Tere was a little instruction on project management, and a lot o ocuson the design process, its character and phases, and also on reormulation obries and problems. However, there was very little about the context I wouldlater find mysel in as practicing designer interacting with colleagues who

had not shared my type o educational experiences. Designers do not work ina vacuum: there is always a commissioning firm or the consultant, or as in thissituation, employment within an organization. Yet here I was, discussing thecolor o a toy engine shaped like a horse, as i my lie depended upon it.


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thereore be service management research on one side and design, where I havemy own background, on the other side. Within these two larger areas there are

several more specific research areas relevant to my research, all o these are oan interdisciplinary character but sit more solidly on one side or the other. Ser-

vice design is research and practice concerned with the development o service,

departing rom a design practice perspective. Service innovation, on the otherside, is also ocused on service development and innovation but departs rommanagerial practices and theories. Design thinking is double-sided with oneunderstanding rom a design perspective, and a slightly different understanding

rom a management perspective. Design management (DM) is truly situated in

the middle o the intersection o design and management, drawing on practice

and theories rom both sides. Both design thinking and design managementrelate more to general management theories than service management theo-

ries; however, I depict them on the design side o the figure because my persp-ective draws on the design literature. Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic), thelast research stream marked out, is a rather recent development within servicemarketing /management research that regards service as a perspective on value

creation. User involvement is treated in several o these research streams, sousers are thereore marked as an overlapping area. Below I present the key areas

USER

SERVICE MARKETING/MANAGEMENT

DESIGN RESEARCH

Service Design

S-D logic

Service Innovation

Design Thinking

MANAGEMENTRESEARCH

DM

Figure . Teoretical landscape o licentiate thesis

Introduction


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o this licentiate thesis: design research, service design, and service marketing/

management.

Design Research

raditionally, design can be understood as product, as process, and as practice.In the context o this thesis design is mainly discussed as practice; however, I do

this in relation to the changing character o the design product and the implica-

tions or design practice.

In Simons seminal book, Te Science of the Artificial,design was definedas, design is the transormation o existing conditions into preerred ones(Simon, :). Although about to be the starting point or design research

in its own right, the broad definition also caused problems. Te critique hasmainly been related to Simons positivistic heritage, considered to be incom-patible with the more organic ways in which designers actually work (Dorst &Dijkhuis, ). Instead, Schn () proposed a more interpretive under-standing o design practice as reflection-in-action. In addition, design as mean-

ing creation and designers as interpreters o meaning have developed as a direc-

tion o understanding (Krippendorff, ; Press & Cooper, ; Verganti,).

Te designers empathy with users and user-centered approaches are ofenbrought orward as central in design practice (Kelley, ; Norman, ).Although Verganti () builds on the understanding o design as meaningcreation, he distances himsel rom Krippendorff's () closeness to humancentered design. Instead, in the concept o design-driven innovation Verganti() argues that designers should not be close to the users, but propose newmeanings.

I am primarily interested in design as a proessional practice and how this re-

lates to the management discourse. Tis relation is to some extent treated within

the discourse o design management. A part o this literature treats the effec-tive management o design, see or example Borja de Mozota, (), Veryzer

& Borja de Mozota () and Walsh, Roy, Bruce & Potter (), but there isalso another more critical stream ocusing on the relationship and intersectiono design and management (Johansson & Woodilla, b; Rylander, a;Sebastian, ).

Since my experience as design manager in the early years o the millennium,

there has been a veritable explosion o literature arguing the benefits o de-

Introduction


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sign thinking or innovation and organizations. Some has been published inacademic journals and reviews (Boland, Collopy, Lyytinen, & Yoo, ; Jelinek,

Romme, & Boland, ) but to a large extent they are accounts o practitio-ner success stories (e.g., . Brown, ; Kelley, ) and in three o theproponents each released a book on the subject (. Brown, ; Lockwood,; Martin, ). However, the notion o design thinking differs in the de-sign and management discourses (Johansson & Woodilla, ). In the morerecent management notion o design thinking one common theme is the pos-sible transerability o design skills, tools and mindset to other disciplines andinto organizations. Te highlighted benefits are the user-centeredness and themultidisciplinary team approach (. Brown & Katz, ), abductive thinking

(Kolko, ) and strength in using a variety o visualization skills (Buxton,

). Tis recent literature can be contrasted to some extent with the moreacademic discourse o design where the character o designers knowledge and

skills has been a topic since the late s (e.g., Alexander, ; Cross, ),

building on conceptualization o different design disciplines.

As design practice has developed there has been a change in what is beingdesigned, or design as product, although I preer to regard it as the design ob-

ject. An increased interest in design or interactions and systems has emergedrom graphical representations, communications, objects or pleasure andutility in industrial design. Until recently these design practices have mainlybeen related to digital media and products, but there is an increasing ocus onorganizations, networks and societal issues (Buchanan, ; Press & Cooper,). In line with this expansion o the design object, yet a new practice in de-

sign has emerged called service design.

Service design

Although awareness o the impact o design on business success is quite welldocumented or industry, it is much less so or service companies, where only o service companies see any role or the design at all (Mager, ). Tis

is changing rapidly, starting in the late s and with an enormous growth inactivity during the s; now service design attracts increasing attention both

rom academia and practitioners (Miettinen & Koivisto, ; Sangiorgi, ).

Practitioners have backgrounds in a variety o design practices, with interaction

design, graphic design and industrial design being the most common. How-

Introduction


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developed nations. Tis development has been reflected in increased interdisci-

plinary service research (Ostrom, et al., ).

Te service marketing and management area grew out o a realization thatservice marketing differed in many ways rom the traditional marketing o pro-ducts (Shostack, ). Following this insight, research emerged that estab-lished services and service research in relation to products (Zeithaml, Para-suraman, & Berry, ). However, some years later Vargo and Lusch, (,

a) proposed an alternative view. Instead o separating products and ser-vices they regarded service as a perspective on value creation and proposeda new logic Service-Dominant logic meaning that we as users integrateour knowledge and capabilities with those rom the firm (both peoples andartiacts) in co-creation o value. Tis understanding o service changed the con-

ceptual position o the customer rom being a passive consumer and answerero questionnaires to an active co-creator o value. It also breaks the ormerlywell-accepted sequential value chain perspective and enhances the understand-

ing o value created in value constellations (Normann & Ramirez, ). At the

same time, requirements o how to involve users in the development processchange when the user/customer becomes an active co-creator o value (Ostrom,

et al., ). However, Service-Dominant logic is highly conceptual, lacking the

tools and methods or how to realize these eatures in practice. Te ocus hasbeen on discussing where and how value is created, with very little consider-ation o questions like how to understand and involve people in accordance with

this value perspective.

From a design point o view, the increased ocus on the role o the custom-ers, understanding their context and in what ways they should and could beinvolved is intriguing. First, these questions have been, and still are, central indesign practice and in large areas in design research. Second positioning users at

the core o value creation potentially opens up space or a more central position-

ing o design practice competence, with claims that designers are experts on the

integration o users perspectives.

STRUCTURE AND SCOPE OF LICENTIATE THESIS

In this licentiate thesis I take as the starting point my own design practice expe-

rience as exemplified at the beginning o this chapter. Questions that troubledme in my work as designer/design manager have continued to be drivers or

Introduction


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where my curiosity has taken me during the first years o my research. I candescribe it like an initial itching, the first eeling that there might be some kind

o mystery involved, as Alvesson & Krreman () view the beginning o theresearch process.

Tere are two mysteries that have been lingering in this context o servicedesign and service management. One is related to the changing nature o de-sign practice: what happens, and what are the implications or industrial design

practice when service, rather than artiacts, is the objective o the design. Tesecond is the increased emphasis in the literature on the user/customers rolein the value creation and realization o service. I suspect that there is a potential

tension when the different perspectives o users in service management anddesign discourses meet in the common agenda o service design.

Tis licentiate thesis is a compilation o papers,it contains two published pa-pers (Paper I:Comparing Design Tinking with Service-Dominant logic, andPaper II:Te Meander Model a metaphor or user involvement in service de-

sign) and a body o text (the Kappa) developed to situate the two papers in abroader context. As the first part in a ull PhD project, I have chosen to establish

a theoretical oundation or the empirical exploration that will ollow in the next

phase. Te first mystery as stated above can only be briefly touched without con-

ducting in-depth empirical studies. Paper II contains the only empirical workin this thesis, and methods and so on are only discussed within that paper. Inthis Kappa I take a conceptual approach and ocus on discussing the tensions o

service design and service management as described in literature.

Purpose and research questions

Te overall purpose o this thesis is to contribute to academic knowledge about

the emerging design practice concerned with the design o service. Tere areour research questions that are treated both in the individual papers and in the

theoretical ramework developed in the Kappa:

) How can the relation be described between the two concepts, design thinking

in the design discourse and Service-Dominant logic in the service managementdiscourse?

Tis relation is explored in Paper I,and the underlying concepts o designthinking and Service-Dominant logic are presented in more detail below in sec-

tions Design thinking(pp. -) and What does a Service-Dominant logic per-spective mean?(pp. -).

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) In what ways are the involvement of users and customers conceptualized in

service design and service management respectively?

) In what ways are co-creation described and understood in service design andservice marketing/management discourses respectively?

Te gaps identified in the above mentioned sections are explored below inthe Chapter ; User involvement in service design and service management(pp.-). Research question number three is also partly explored in Paper II, and

urther treated in Chapter : Contributions and discussion (pp. -).

) How to reconcile Vergantis notion of design as meaning-creating activity in

design-driven innovation with a service design perspective that puts the user in

the center?

Te ourth research question is explored in Paper II. Te theories underlying

this work are discussed in depth below in Chapter , in the sections on Serviceinnovation(p. -) and in Chapter : User involvement in service design andmanagement(pp. -).

LAYOUT OF THE THESIS

Following this first introductory chapter, the main body o work is presented ina set o five chapters covering the theoretical landscape where I have ound my

points o reerence.

In CHAPER : Design and design practice, CHAPER Te design man-agement area, and CHAPER : Service marketing/management, I presentthese research areas and position mysel in relation to the literature.

Te ollowing two chapters, CHAPER : Service design and CHAPER :

User involvement in service management and service marketing, have a slightly

different character. I first present the respective bodies o literature, then pro-ceed to synthesize and develop key concepts by proposing characteristics andrelations ound in the reviewed literature.

CHAPER presents the appended papers and their relation, and discusses

the development o the research questions.

CHAPER , the final chapter, contains contributions and discussion.

Introduction


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USER

DM

Service

Design

Design

Thinking

MA

R

DESIGN

RESEARCH


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design problems being defined as ill-structured (or more reading on Simon and

well- and ill-structured problems, see Simon, ()).

In his book, Te Sciences of the Artificial,Simon () set the stage or ascience o design, a science o the man made in its own right. Following thesethoughts, in the s there was a strong interest in methods and descriptions

o the design process, also called the design methods movement (Bayazit, ;Cross, ). Attempts were made to make the design process as predictable as

possible, and diagrams and flow charts were drawn o how the design processshould be conducted.

However, discrepancies were ound between the descriptions o designprocesses and what designers actually did. Alexander later rejected the nor-mative design methods movement that grew out o Alexanders then-seminal

book on methods and processes o designing. In the preace o the paperback edition o his book, Notes on the synthesis of form, (Alexander, ), heinstead emphasized the diagrams and the patterns that emerged out o the process

described as the most important. I you understand the need to create inde-pendent diagrams, which resolve, or solve, systems of interacting human forces,you will find that you can create, and develop, these diagrams piecemeal, one at

a time, in the most natural way, out of your experience of buildings and design,simply by thinking about the forces which occur there and the conflicts between

these orces. (My emphasis). For me this shows a direction towards an interest

and ocus on the situation aced and a less rationalistic view o the design pro-cess and practice.

Dorst () discussed the problematic o raming design as a problem-solv-

ing activity at all, regardless o whether there is a well or ill-structured prob-lem. Arguing such raming relies on a rationalistic understanding that there is aproblem to be solved and how this should be solved. Instead, Dorst considered

the importance o the situation that is brought orward, saying here is a needor a subjective understanding o and in a particular situation. Tis view wasexplored earlier in the work o Winograd and Flores ().

However, another perspective has evolved rom Schn who studied the rela-

tion between architecture students, teachers and their interactions in teachingsituations (Schn, ). He reported on how the visualizations and discussionsollowing them were integrated in the mutual development o the design situa-

tion at hand. Schn ound that the design process and the interaction betweenstudents and teachers could not be described as result o rational problem solv-

ing process. Instead, the designs developed through the interaction with the

Design and design practice


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design material, sketches, and reflections on what these sketches meant. Tiswas ramed as reflection-in-action, described as the designers reflective conver-

sation with the situation (Schn, ).Design was established in the s as a discipline being studied on its ownterms, meaning with its own rigorous culture, based on reflective practice o de-

signing argued Cross (). Both Lawson (/) and Rowe () have

backgrounds in architecture, however they both published books during thisdecade that have become important in understanding o how designers think,based on a practice perspective.

So, seeing design as reflection-in-action in an interpretative tradition, con-tradicts design as the rational goal oriented problem-solving process suggested

in the definition by Friedman (). Dorst and Dijkhuis () concluded

that these different paradigms might be complementary or describing di-erent kinds o design practices. Tis means that adopting a problem solvingapproach might be more appropriate when the situations at hand are more clear

cut, whereas describing design activity as reflection-in-action is more appropri-

ate in the conceptual stages o design work where the designer has no standard

strategies to ollow and is proposing and trying out problem/ solution struc-tures (ibid.,:.).

Within the interpretative tradition, Krippendorff () proposed thatdesign is making sense (o things). Tis was urther developed by Verganti(), who emphasized meaning-making in relation to innovation. Press and

Cooper () also described the designer as a maker that makes meaning pos-

sible, encompassing the crafing o solutions. In effect, they argue, the designer

is a cultural intermediary.

In the context o this thesis, design practice has a purpose and is situatedwithin some kind o business context, such as in industrial design, which ismy own background. Te context o design has changed dramatically since the

early design methods movement, as well as what is considered to be the objecto design. Te more recent understanding o design as meaning creating activity

becomes highly relevant in these changing settings o design.



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and new media. Te things or the design o material objects includes tradi-tional concerns related to material, production and shape but has expanded into

diverse interpretation o physical, psychological, social and cultural relation-ships between products and human beings. (Buchanan, :). Symbols andthings are the ocus o design in the th century argues Buchanan, "unless these

become parts o living experience o the human being, [] they have no sig-nificant value or meaning" (:), it is the relationship between the symbols,

artiacts and human beings that is the ocus o the third order o design - action.

Interaction design is the design discipline that is maybe most thought o in this

area, interested in the interaction between human beings, mediated through ob-

jects. Te last and ourth order o design ocuses on environments and systems.

Te emphasis is in human systems and integration o inormation, physical arti-

acts and interactions, according to Buchanan.

By definition, a system is the totality o all that is contained, has been contained, and

may yet be contained within it. We can never see or experience this totality. We can

only experience our personal pathway through a system. And in our effort to navigate

the systems and environments that affect our lives, we create symbols or representa-

tions that attempt to express the idea or thought that is the organizing principle. Te

idea or thought that organizes a system or environment is the ocus o the ourth

order design. (Buchanan, :, My emphasis).

Similarly, Kimbell (b) argued that in design or service the relationsbetween things and actors within systems are the ocus o the design activity,rather than the objects themselves. Tis is in coherence with the th order odesign (Buchanan, , ).

Design at this level o complexity was only suggested by Buchanan, but is now

starting to be realized when design is introduced or changing public policy (e.g.

Miller, Rudnick, Kimbell, & Philipsen, ) and the redesign o public services

and health systems (e.g. Burns, Cottam, Vanstone, & Winhall, ; Parker &Heapy, ). Tis area is increasingly labeled transormation design, where

the aim is lasting and ongoing (behavioral) change within the organization and/or community and its stakeholders. Sangiorgi (:) argues: Adding the ad-

jective transormative to Design or Services requires thereore a reflection,not only on how designers can conduct transormative processes, but also onwhich transormations we are aiming to, why, and in particular or the benefito whom.



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However, in this transition it is important to understand what there is to de-

sign. Segelstrm and Holmlid () argued that the service designers see their

design object as events and perormances in interaction and co-creation be-tween humans, supported by other means. Redstrm () argued that there isa tendency to shif rom object to users as the subject or the design. User-centered

design risks becoming user design where the process in which people turnsinto users is in ocus how use and users should turn out. In experience design

and service design there is rhetoric to design the users experiences, which Red-

strm (ibid.) argued is not there or the designers to design.

CHARACTERISTICS OF DESIGN PRACTICE

Te traditional design practice has been described through the tools, methodsand approaches practiced. In the description o current design practice the o-cus on processes and tools still seem to be dominant.

Press and Cooper () distinguish between the acto designing and theprocesso designing. Te act o designing demands skills in knowing how to:manipulate different material and visualize in relevant material. Te process o

designing demands a broad variety o process-related skills such as in research,to be able to deconstruct, synthesize, create and communicate through various

means and orms. But it also requires personal attributes such as being intuitive,

sensitive, and holistic and to be both convergent and divergent. In addition, em-

pathy with users and different methods o capturing users experiences through

prototyping or other means are needed. (Buxton, ; Kelley, ; Press &Cooper, ).

Iterative processes between the whole/the detail and practice/theory are o-ten mentioned as characteristics o design practice (e.g., Edeholt, ; Rosell,; Rowe, ). Te co-evolution o the solution and problem space is oneconcept or describing how designers move between these different modesin iterative processes (Dorst & Cross, ). Tis has also been ramed as anabductive process (Kolko, , Dunne & Martin ). Te process requires

a conjunctive mindset, which means aiming or what ought to be, and embrac-ing the idea o a multitude o possible solutions (Cross, ; Edeholt, ).Additional sources identiy different kinds o visual thinking, and presentation

skills used to describe a multitude o possible utures as especially important (.

Brown, ; Lawson, /; Rosell, ).



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addition the design object in service, is co-created with the users o the service

in the service encounter.

Tis brings back the discussion on how to understand design practice, as aproblem solving activity, as a reflective practice, or as a meaning creating prac-tice. O course there are no clear-cut barriers between these three. Tere willalways be parts o the process that involve problem solving, o both well- andill-structured problems. Nonetheless, to me it seems suitable to pursue theconcept o design practice as situated and as reflection-in-action, however with

an increased emphases on meaning creation.

I agree that i seeing design as making sense in general as Krippendorff() proposes then all human activity involves design in one way or an-other. Design seen as any type o activity or any persons skills o changing their

situation at hand is a broad perspective on design. I am specifically interested ohow designers, these people that made the activity o designing their proession,

make sense o their proessional practice and how that activity is described inliterature. Like Krippendorff (:) says: Design publicly acknowledgedcompetencies, the use o methods, but above all on an organized way o lan-guaging, a design discourse, that coordinates working in teams and with clients,

justifies proposals or artiacts to their stakeholders, and distinguishes proes-sional designers rom those doing it largely or themselves.

SUMMARY

In this chapter I discussed my understandings o design and design practice as

situated and a meaning-creating activity by relating to some important theorists

in design research. Te character o the design object was related to Buchanansour orders o design, and I noted the increasingly complex situations in which

design practice acts, or example, as being a part o or even a driver o societalchange.

Te characteristics o design practice as described in the literature were dis-cussed in relation to this increased complexity. One aspect in the literature is

an increasing ocus on the roles that designers take as acilitators or mediators,while maintaining strong visualization and other design skills.

In the final section I returned to discuss design as meaning creating activity.

Putting meaning creation rather than the problem solving as central in designpractice relates well to complexities aced in the design o service.



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So ar I have discussed concepts o design and design practice as i (isolated)

in a design studio, whereas in practice much design work takes place within,

or in close relationship to, business organizations, where there is an overlay omanaging the design process. Tereore, in the ollowing section I will discussresearch that treats relations between design and management.



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USER

SERVICE MARKETING

/MANAGEMENT

DM

Service

Design

Design

Thinking

MANAGEMENT

RESEARCH

DESIGN

RESEARCH

Service

Innovation

S-D logic


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CHAPTER

The design management area

In this section I describe the development o the design management areathrough a short historical overview. I continue by discussing the different

research interest that have been dominant, with a short note on how the

design management practice has developed and research that ollowed.

Afer presenting three contemporary research streams, the chapter ends

with a summary.

SHORT HISTORICAL TRACING

Te starting point o design management as a practice in a modern industrialcontext can be reerred back to Peter Behrens, trained as architect and work-ing or AEG in the early years o the th century. He became known as thefirst industrial designer, and developed an entire corporate identity programwhere logotypes, products, and communication were coordinated with eachother. Also, as ar back as the s Olivetti typewriters were well known ortheir coherent corporate design and or using designers to take part in corpo-rate decisions, and their competitor IBM ollowed this practice in the s(e.g., J. Heskett, ; Johansson & Svengren Holm, a; Lorenz, ).

In these early years the practice was more about aesthetic management rather

than the work processes. Te designers, sometimes called hero designers, tookthe role o the master, working in isolation rom other unctions. However, with

the development o industry, designers in an industrial context increasinglyworked together with other competencies, specifically engineers and market-ers. During the s and s this led to an emphasis in practice o how tointegrate and manage design competence with other competencies, and design

processes with other processes. Soon different types o problems and issues oc-curred. Designers wanted to be integrated early in the process to avoid styling,

while engineers preerred to allow them in at the end o the process. Difficulties

arose in defining who had the responsibility or taking aesthetic decisions: there

are anecdotes telling that the CEOs wie decided color and shape, or the color o

the tie he wore that day guided the decisions. Te role o someone who managed


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and took responsibility or these activities emerged, the design manager. How-

ever, there was still a need to spread knowledge about design and the effects o

the same. Te Design Management Institute was ounded in USA in withthe stated mission to spread and build knowledge about design managementthrough seminars, conerences and case studies.

Academic interest in design managementbegan with the first internationalresearch project, the RIAD, initiated by Design Management Institute andHarvard Business School in , that resulted in a set o case studies and in-

volved scholars such as John Heskett, Karen Freeze and Angela Dumas. Lisbeth

Svengren Holm took part in the project and her dissertation (Svengren, ),

the first Swedish dissertation in design management (and second in the world),

built partly on cases rom the RIAD project. Te first issue o Design Manage-

ment Review, a proessional magazine uniquely ocused on design manage-ment, was published the same year. Te first academic courses in design man-agement took place in the U.K. in the late s (Johansson & Svengren, b).

However, it was another years beore the first issue o an academic journal,Design Management Journal, was published in .

In the s abusiness perspective emerged with an awareness and inter-est in design as a strategic tool (Kotler & Rath, ) and the concept o silentdesigners, meaning people with large influence in the design process but withno ormal training and/or awareness o their importance, was coined (Gorb &Dumas, ). Initial studies were made on the integration o design and other

unctions in companies (Dumas & Mintzberg, ). Findings included prob-lematic relationships between R&D and marketing unctions (Souder, ),and differences were identified between design management in manuacturing

and service companies (Dumas & Whitfield, ).Te relation between design and strategy was urther developed in the s

and continued into the s, building on assumptions that design was under-

used as a competitive resource and that there was a lack o sufficient integration.

. Personal communication with Lisbeth Svengren Holm --

. Te history o DMI publications is somewhat complex. Te quarterly DMI Review wasfirst known under the name Design Management Journal until the start o . Te an-nual publication as the Design Management Journal was known as the DMI AcademicReview until . Tere were only two issues published during this period; one in and one in .



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Several books were published on the subject, bringing orward the importance

o building alliances (Bamord, Gomes-Casseres, & Robinson, ; Bruce &

Jevnaker, ) and connections to corporate strategy (Blaich, ). In thetextbook Te Design Agenda, Cooper and Press () suggested design wasactive on strategic, tactical and operational levels in a company.

In order to achieve the benefits o design at strategic level and as strategicresource Svengren () suggested integration on three levels, as unctional,

visual and conceptual integration. Jevnaker () also stressed the importance

o integration o competences and put emphasis on a dynamic rather than lin-ear process; she added relationship building and the importance o repeateddesign investments as key or suffusing a company with design. Tis suffusionrelates to the preerred way o design integration, called inusion, suggested by

Dumas and Mintzberg (). Other elements ound in Dumas and Mintzbergsempirical study were champion, policy, program and unction, while otherresearch made connections or structuring design management in line withPorters value chain (Borja de Mozota, ). Further research recommendedthat design managers know and understand corporate strategy and commu-nicate about designs value using perormance measurements (Hertenstein &Platt, ). In addition, Liedtka () argued or seeing strategy making as adesign process, claiming they both are synthetic, adductive, hypothesis-driven,

opportunistic dialectical, inquiring and value-driven. Connecting design andstrategy in this way relates more to how design is discussed in the later designthinking discourse than to the design-strategy discussion at the time. A moredetailed description in Swedish o the different streams within design and strat-

egy research can be ound in the writings o Ulla Johansson and Lisbeth Sven-gren Holm (a; Svengren Holm & Johansson, ).

Furthermore, in the s and continuing in the s, different Europeandesign councils completed many reports and investigations exploring designand business. Most notable was the British Design Council and its publications.

Some examples are, Te Impact of Design on Stock Market Performance - (Design Council, ), and periodical surveys and publications o the

use o design in Britain rom -, which can all be ound at their webpage www.designcouncil.org.uk; they continue to conduct surveys o the designindustry as such (Design Council, ). In Denmark the Danish DesignCentre conducted a survey o the use o design in Danish companies (DanishDesign Centre, ) and developed a design ladder or discussing the designmaturity in different companies and hence their use o design. Tis design



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ladder has also been used by the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID,

), and similar investigations have been made in Sweden, reporting on

attitudes to design use in Swedish industry (Detrell, ; Nielsn, ; SVID,). Tere were also a ew research articles treating design use and businesssuccess (Gemser & Leenders, ; Hertenstein, Platt, & Veryzer, ; Walsh,

), confirming a positive relationship.

Te above mentioned research in design and strategy, the integration odesign in organizations, and the various reports and investigations shapes theunderstanding o designs role in companies and orms an executive perspec-tive. Te dominant assumptions are that design is difficult to manage, and that

companies with their different unctions and management need to learn moreabout design in order to be able to take advantaged o the competitive advan-

tage. In all these discussions, it is a undamental assumption that design anddesign management are beneficial or company perormance. Since the turn o the

millennium the design and strategy stream has remained intact and continuesto be urther developed.

In addition, there has been growing interest in two different ways o explor-ing other aspects o the relation o design and management. Te main stream o

design management research continues to be interested in how to integrate andmanage design unctions in organizations. A smaller but growing stream is in-

terested in the intersection o design and management, rather than the manage-

ment o design. Tese two perspectives will be examined below. Furthermore,three research areas situated within the latter perspective can be distinguished,

design thinking, service design, and design and innovation; all three will bediscussed in more detail. However, I first discuss the two different perspec-tives in design management research, design management as the managemento design, ollowed by design management as the intersection o design andmanagement.

DESIGN MANAGEMENT AS THE MANAGEMENT OF DESIGN

(PROJECTS AND PROCESSES)

Cooper and Press stated in Te Design AgendaDesign management 'is theapplication o the process o management to the processes o innovation anddesign. (Cooper & Press, :).

One rather common understanding is that design management is a mattero leading and managing design projects and processes: in practice this is what



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design management is about. Tis was the nature o my work when I held adesign manager position: Initiating and leading design projects, appointing

designers, coordinating design processes, and making design decisions in theorganization o which I was a part.Te application o management processes to design processes has been ex-

plored in several studies. All these imply a top down perspective where designis connected to and integrated into well known theories o managementand marketing. Examples are the above mentioned coupling with Porters value

chain (Borja de Mozota, ) and in relation to the marketing mix o the Ps

(e.g., Borja de Mozota, ). In addition, design management research has re-

lated design processes to defined concepts in the management discourse or the

purpose o generating theoretical rameworks, such as the balance score card

concept (Borja de Mozota, ), or the ramework developed by Sun, Williams& Evans () using Porters Five Forces theory.

Other studies have looked at the role o the design manager. Press andCooper () developed an empirically-based typology, proposing that thedesign manager worked as: ) creative team manager, ) design procurementmanager, ) account manager, and ) marketing manager. In addition theauthors suggested a fifh role as a process manager. Which role(s) the designmanager takes or can take is also related to how the company has organizedor design unctions in the organization (Veryzer, ) and the competencieso the individual designers (Perks, Cooper, & Jones, ). Perks et al., (ibid.)discussed design in three roles, as ) unctional specialism, ) part o a multi-unctional team and ) leader o the new product development process. Tere are

studies discussing the second role, the designers role in these multiunctionalteams, which ocus on communication and collaboration within the teams (e.g.,

Kleinsmann & Valkenburg, ; Persson, Karlsson, & Rohlin, ; Stempfle& Badke-Schaub, ). When in the management role, as leader o team orprocess, there is an pronounced demand or management skills; Perks et al.() ound that designers in this role challenged marketing and technologyassumptions made by other unctions. Carlgren () also highlighted chal-

lenges related to different proessional cultures involved, including where thedesign unction is positioned within the company.Many textbooks aim to teach designers how to manage design projects and

how to build design strategies (Best, ; Borja de Mozota, ; von Stamm,

), buy they also exist to teach other unctions about design. For example,Bruce and Cooper () argue that the marketing and management side needs



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to learn more about design. However, there are also writings in the HCI litera-

ture, directed towards the design managers, arguing they need to lif their eyes

to see the larger picture and learn how to transer the users need to businesspeople (Anderson, ; Ashley, ; Lindegaard, ).However, the application o management tools and methods to the design

process might not be as easy and straightorward as suggested in these text-books and in the citation in the beginning o this section. Instead, the difficulties

with design as a different culture is repeatedly mentioned, and my personal ex-

perience in the introduction can be considered as one example. Bluntly said, the

mismatch between design as a creative/artistic practice and the business world

became more noticeable in the interdisciplinary teamwork that increased in the

s and s. Te role o the designer changed rom the hero designer to a

team member or even manager o the other team members. o apply manage-ment processes to design processes there needs to be some kind o matchbetween them, some kind o common ground that ties them together. How can

this be understood?

DESIGN MANAGEMENT AS (PROBLEMATIZING) THE INTERSEC-

TION OF DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT

Back in Dumas and Mintzberg wrote:

Management implies order, control and guidance o people, processes and activi-

ties. Design also implies order, control and guidance, but o things, artiacts and

images. Neither processes, however, is itsel one o order, control or guidance.

(Dumas & Mintzberg, ).

Although they highlighted the similarities in activities and how they werecarried through, and acknowledged differences in outcome and the materialsas a result o controlling and guiding, Dumas and Mintzberg did not continueto discuss the characteristics or the two perspectives. Instead they proposed five

ways o how tomanage the design process. However, exactly these similaritiesand differences have been the ocus o the perspective o design management re-search that looks at the intersection o design and management rather than pos-

ing questions on how tomanage design. Research that problematizes the inter-

section o design and management sheds light on the relation o these different

discourses. Questions asked include: What are the epistemological oundations



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and how can they be understood? What underlying assumptions are inherent in

each? And what are the consequences o these differences?

Johansson and Woodilla (b) explored the paradigmatic roots o theo-ries in management, design and design management by using Burrell and Mor-gans analytic ramework, with its our paradigms: radical humanist, radicalstructuralist, unctionalist and interpretative. Tey ound that while researchin management/organization spreads over all our paradigms, the main bodyo research is situated within the unctionalist paradigm. In contrast the mainbody o design research is placed within the radical humanist paradigm, in the

opposite corner o the quadrant. Further, design management research is al-most exclusively placed within the unctionalist paradigm, as shown in Figure below. Tis analysis draws attention to the diverging knowledge and thought

domains o design and management research. It also suggests why designresearch theories have scarcely been influenced by design management research

and vice versa: the theories do not attend to the same figures o thought andhave thereore difficulties in enriching and connecting to one another. Tesedifferent knowledge perspectives have been related to power structures andhierarchies within companies (Johansson & Woodilla, a) and according to

Radical Humanist

Paradigm

Radical Structuralist

Paradigm

Interpretive Paradigm Functionalist Paradigm

Design Research Management Research Design Management Research

Figure . Paradigmatic overlap o Management, Design and Design

Management. Adapted rom (Johansson & Woodilla, b).



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these authors, designers competence seem to relate better to less hierarchicalstructures.

Rylander (b) has urther explored the epistemological underpinnings odesign thinking/design firms and knowledge work. She argues they have unda-

mentally different approaches to problem solving: knowledge work resting ona rational analytic approach, versus design that rests onan interpretive, emer-

gent and explicitly embodied approach (ibid.,:). In so doing Rylander showsgaps but also potential or ways these two perspectives can complement andenrich each other.

In other studies that do not draw on epistemological underpinnings, Borja de

Mozota () described design and management as diverging orces, mean-ing that they strive in different directions, whereas Sebastian () saw both

design and management as purposeul activities aiming or the changing ormaking o new situations. Sebastian departed rom commonalities instead othe differences between the two, arguing that both involve interpersonal rela-tionships, and have the aim to develop something or people, or even the people

themselves.

In more popular writings the underlying assumptions are ofen brought or-

ward as stereotypes in each respective discourse (Liedtka, ; Martin, ).Martin () argued that there is a undamental conflict between the concept

o reliability preerred by managers wanting to be able to predict the uture,and validity preerred by designers. Designers ocused on the actual use and its

satisaction. Liedtka () presented different underlying assumptions suchas design relying on subjective experiences and experimentation, avouringdoing instead o planning, and making decisions based on emotions rather than

logics. In contrast, she argued that the other side o the coin represented thebusiness side. Both Liedtka and Martin suggested remedies or how these twopartners can understand each other better by knowing more and acknowledg-ing the different viewpoints o the world they both are aiming to change. In rela-

tion to the literature o the s where it was the marketers and managers that

should learn about design, the authors here give advice both to the designers

and managers.Looking at design management as the intersection o design and management

reveals their different roots, and the study by Johansson and Woodilla (b)

shows to what extent the design management literature relates to paradigmscloser to management tradition than design tradition. Tis opens up a space or

design management research connecting to a more designerly epistemology.



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Tis more critical approach to design management has occurred during thelast ten years. In addition, during this time at least three different areas within

design management research have emerged, all positioned in the intersection odesign and management. From one perspective, these three areas could be seen

as a progression o design awareness that exists simultaneously in any countryand market (Cooper, Junginger, & Lockwood, ). Tey could also be un-derstood as different placements o design (management) activity in line withBuchanans our orders o design, without hierarchical classification.

Te three areas are: ) Design thinking a renewed interest in designerlytools and methods or enhancing organizations innovation capabilities. ) De-

sign and innovation coupling o design theories with technology and innova-

tion management theories and last ) Service design an expansion o design

practice to also include service, people and processes.

Design Thinking

Design thinking, including design methods, is suggested to be the third stageo design management, representing essential design awareness (Cooper, et al.,

), directed towards change in society and organizations. Tis is closely con-nected to Buchanans ourth order o design, thoughtor environmentand relate

to the development and broadening o design practice as discussed in the sec-tion on design above.

Te book Te Art o Innovationby IDEO manager om Kelley () sparked

a renewed interest in design as an approach to innovation, bringing orwardwhat was later called design thinking. Since then the concept o design think-ing has been used in an almost exploding ashion to denote designs potentialrelation to innovativeness. Te concept has not only been used by designersbut also as an approach or managers to learn and use, as promoted in the busi-

ness press (Boland & Collopy, ; . Brown, ; Dunne & Martin, ;Verganti, ). Tis movement has been described as hype, meaning a quickly

rising interest in a specific phenomenon with a supposed equal passing interest.

Accordingly its duration has also been questioned (Johansson & Woodilla,; Rylander, b).Bruce Nussbaum, in the role o journalist at Business Week, has been one o

the main advocates o design thinking during the first decade afer the millen-nium. In I.D. Magazine named him one o the most powerul peoplein design, and in addition he is visiting proessor o innovation and design at



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Parsons Te New School o Design. Ironically, while I was writing this text,Nussbaum proclaimed that design thinking is a ailed experiment (Nussbaum,

) and that he has now moved on to what he calls CQ Creative Intelligence.One o his reasons was that design thinking as a concept didnt deliver what was

promised. But what was the actual promise, and who promised what? Nuss-baum himsel was one o the main promoters o the concept and thereby one othose who constructed the promises that others like Johansson and Woodilla

and Rylander say are unreasonably high and have the character o a ad rather

than something resting on a solid ground.

A closer look at the concept o design thinking reveals two different under-standings, one related to the design discourse and another to the managementdiscourse. Te understanding within design dates back as ar as to the design

methods movement in the s mentioned earlier, while the concept o de-sign thinking in management discourse is much younger (Hassi & Lakso, ;

Johansson & Woodilla, ).

One o the notions o the design-based understanding o design thinking isrooted in Schns () thoughts about reflection-in-action and emphasizesthe tools and methods used by designers, as discussed above in Characteristics odesign practice(pp. -). Design thinking is then understood as a conceptual-ization o design practice, even o a multitude o design practices (Cross, ;

Lawson, /), as a way o capturing designers cognition (Rowe, ).

Te notion o design thinking within the management discourse is seem-ingly constructed rom an outside in perspective, and describes possibilities o

design tools or methods being used by non-designers (Dunne & Martin, ),

as highlighted in the management and business literature (Boland & Collopy,; Martin, ). With its roots in Simons definition o design presentedin the Science o the Artificial, "Everyone designs who devises courses o action

aimed at changing existing situations into preerred ones" (Simon, :),design thinking is ofen used as,"approaching managerial problems as designers

approach design problems" (Dunne & Martin, :). In effect this meanstaking designers ways o thinking and acting into another context, including

situations other than those in which they originated. In relation to the quoterom Cooper and Press, this is about applying design processes and methods tomanagement rather than the other way around. Key eatures o design thinking

in this construction are capabilities to work with wicked problems, being open

to ambiguities, and an iterative process. Martin () discussed the lef/rightthinking capabilities o the brain as significant or design thinking. As discussed



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by Cooper et al., (), design thinking seems to be about thinking throughdesign, requiring that non-designers should adapt a designerly mind-set or

entering into new situations. On the other hand, the visualizations skills, as usedin the act o designing (Press & Cooper, ) that are key in the design practice

based notion are not specifically treated within the management discourse. Asdiscussed below in the sections on design and design practice, visualizations o

different kinds are used both or development o thought as in the concept oreflection-in-action, and as effective means o communicating within a team.Visualization skills are something that develop over time and are based in anartistic training. In descriptions o the design notion o design thinking theseskills are core in how the designers deal with ambiguities, iterations and com-plex situations.

In previous writings within the design discourse design thinking is acknowl-edged to be part o different practices, arguing the underpinning logics alsodiffer: industrial design stresses the possible, the engineering side stresses thenecessary and marketing stresses what is contingent in the changing attitudesand preerences o potential users (Buchanan, ). Understanding designthinking rom this perspective shows that the hype discourse o design think-

ing in management does not take into account the true complexity and ben-efits o the design practice design thinking. Possibly this might be one o thereasons or the lack o results that Nussbaum mentions. Tis difference was also

discussed by Johansson et al. () who concluded the design notion o design

thinkingor designerly thinkingto be well grounded, consisting o five discourse

with academic roots going back to the s, whereas the management notion

o design thinking lacks thorough academic grounding and is a new conceptwith o the reviewed literature published afer .

his renewed and increased interest in designers tools, methods andapproaches rom management and organizational scholars also highlights pos-

sibilities or design practice. Returning to the changing character o the design

object discussed above, design is now seen as a valuable capability that does not

necessarily involve products, but can be used to address issues rom strategy to

societal change.

Design & Innovation

Another research area that has thrived during the last decade is the intersec-tion o design and innovation management. Innovation theory has a history



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o being overshadowed by product development theory and the developmento more linear approaches such as the stage-gate model (R. G. Cooper, )

and QM principles (e.g., Powell, ); these have also been influential in thedesign management as management-o-design research. However, during thepast approximately years, the field o innovation has broadened through anumber o approaches that deal more directly with how innovation occurs.

Several o these approaches to innovation are inspired by design practice and

theory. For example, in the book Design-inspired innovation(Utterback et al.,) innovation scholars reported on international research about designs role

in the innovation process. Te authors emphasized three important aspects:technology, user need, and language. Language reers to the meaning o theproduct to the user in his or her context, and Verganti () explored this con-

cept urther in an article on designers as brokers o language. Design-inspiredinnovation is urther developed in research streams on design-driven innova-tion. In this concept radical technological innovation is coupled with meaning

creation, with the suggested result o radical innovation o meaning (Verganti,, , ).

In parallel with above mentioned evolvement Hatchuel and Lemasson de-veloped the concept-knowledge (C-K) theory, a more rational approach thatnevertheless introduced a creative or generative capability to Simons problem-

solving approach to design theory (Hatchuel, ; Hatchuel, Le Masson, &Weil, , ). In more recent developments these scholars viewed inno-vation as systemic, repeated and oriented, and essentially based on innova-tive design activities. Te authors argued the need or strategies and structures

that made room or the organization o innovative design (LeMasson, Weil, &Hatchuel, ). However, this understanding was still coupled with a rational-istic understanding o design than the more embodied interpretation proposed

by Rylander (b, ). Te design and innovation research stream relatesstrongest to the first stage o Cooper et al.s () design awareness situatedwithin a manuacturing context, and could also be positioned as mainly treating

things, Buchanans second order. Similar developments have occurred in entre-

preneurship theory, not least inspired by Sarasvahty's article () in which shedeveloped Simons decision theory in the direction o effectuation in effect as learning by doing what is insecure and unknown beorehand rather thandeciding among already defined options. Hjort (; ) also connectedentrepreneurship with learning instead o managerial theories o control.



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Te area o design and innovation relates mainly to product development and

is thereore not treated in urther depth in this service design thesis, although

the concept o design driven innovation has attracted my attention, and is dis-cussed in later parts o this thesis. Nevertheless, the question o how design isrelated to innovation is core in the concept o design thinking, specifically inthe way innovation was promoted by IDEO in the book Te Art of Innovation(Kelley, ), discussed in greater depth above.

Service design

Te expansion o design practice to include services and experiences can also be

dated to this side o the millennium. In this expansion the intersection o design

is with the service marketing and management discourse and can be situatedin the context o brand and marketing proposed by Cooper et al. () andrelated to Buchanans proposed third order o design, action, and also thought(Holmlid, a). Studies in design management have had a strong product de-

velopment ocus, emphasizing the design order o things rather than interaction

or thought (Holmlid, a; Sun, et al., ). Nevertheless, there is researchin service design leadership (Gloppen, ) and how to manage designersand other stakeholders involvement in the service design process (Han, ).

Holmlid () concluded that the implementation and evaluation processesare critical challenges or the design management o service design, specifi-cally because service design most ofen is perormed or realized by people, not

products.

Returning to the quote o Dumas and Mintzberg (p. ), design management

in the service sector also involves order, control and guidance o people, pro-cesses and activities in addition to the things, artiacts and images that havebeen the competence areas o industrial design. Tis development and the im-

plications thereo are discussed in detail in the chapter on service design. Inaddition, the relation o design and service marketing and management is themain topic o this thesis and is urther treated throughout the ollowing chapters

and is thereore not dealt with in more detail in this section.

SUMMARY

In this chapter I briefly traced the historical roots o design management back to

the early th century. Tis was ollowed with a description o the development



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SER

SERVICE MARKETING

/MANAGEMENT

M

MANAGEMENT

RESEARCH

Service

Innovation

S-D logic


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CHAPTER


In this chapter, I first describe briefly how the research field o servicemarketing and management developed rom within marketing research,

then describe the Service-Dominant logic perspective, its key concepts and

implications or service innovation. Further, the chapter presents the ways

service design has been treated within this research stream and ends with a

summary.

DEVELOPMENT OF SERVICE MARKETING AND SERVICE

MANAGEMENT

Services marketing as an explicit field o research emerged around the s,

and by the s the body o knowledge was strong enough to be regarded asan research area in its own right (Berry & Parasuraman, ; S. Brown, et al.,). Te driver behind the development o service marketing in academiawas the growing service economy, specifically the deregulation o severalservice-intensive areas in the s, such as the airline, financial service andtelecommunications industries (Berry & Parasuraman, ; S. Brown, et al.,). In addition, strong individuals in the international arena contributedto building the oundation. Te research area has been cross-disciplinary rom

its emergence, treating issues such as quality management, design and controlo intangible process and organizational issues, and resulting in an overlapbetween marketing and operations unctions (ibid.). Tus, the research streams

o service marketing/management were difficult to separate.

Te early research treated the extent to which marketing o services was di-

erent rom marketing o goods, and was almost exclusively conceptual (Berry

& Parasuraman, ; S. Brown, et al., ). Shostacks () Harvard Busi-ness Review article Breaking ree rom product marketing is regarded as seminalor the field, and also showed the influence o practitioners in the development

o the research areas. Te article argued that Kotlers marketing logic with itsproduct ocus was not suitable or service companies.


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During the ollowing decade the academic ocus was on the goods andservices dichotomy (Matthing, ) and IHIP emerged as the best-known

model to define and describe services (Zeithaml, et al., ). IHIP stands orIntangibility services are not tangible, thereore they cannot be judged beoreconsumption, or example, compare a sweater with a bus trip; Heterogeneity

the people that take part in the service delivery process, provider and consumer,

are unique at each occasion, thereore it is not possible to reproduce a service;Inseparability o production and consumption services are consumed andproduced at the same moment, hence the planning and development processmust be different; Perishability service cannot be stored or saved (ibid.).

Te IHIP model was widely accepted and used, however, the model has also

been critiqued. Te main critique concerned services being described in rela-

tion to products, so that the ocus easily becomes what services are not, whichmight block possibilities o seeing important aspects o services. Anothercritique was the act that the IHIP model does not account or what services have

become in practice. In act, the character o service has changed enormouslywith the development o networked technologies since the early s. Tis can

be seen as one major reason why the ormerly static description o services was

no longer regarded as relevant.

New ideas o how to describe the nature o services emerged where the em-phasis was on service as a perspective rather than as a replacement o products.

For instance the relational aspects o the service encounter (Grnroos, ;Gummesson, ), and the character o value creation as being a value constel-

lation rather than a value chain (Normann, ; Normann & Ramirez, ).

In Vargo and Lusch () brought these and several other perspectives to-

gether and suggested a Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic) o the market. Teir

article started a debate regarding the relevance o the vocabulary, the extent towhich this concept could be regarded as new or not, and the potential implica-

tions. For more extended reading on this discussion see Lusch and Vargo ()

and the special issue oJournal o the Academic Marketing Sciencein .

WHAT DOES A SERVICE-DOMINANT LOGIC PERSPECTIVEMEAN?

S-D logic should be understood as a perspective on value creation rather thana theory. Some o the aspects and thoughts o S-D logic are intriguing and



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resonate well with my understanding o how design practice relates to valuecreation.

Te first undamental argument in the proposed perspective was to defineservice as: "applications o competences (knowledge and skills), through deeds,processes, and perormances, or the benefit o another entity or the entityitsel." (Vargo & Lusch, b:). In so doing the understanding o service was

no longer tied to whether the outcome is tangible or not, this was urther em-phasized in Foundational Premise (FP) number : service is the fundamentalbasis o exchange(Vargo & Lusch, a:).

Tese thoughts were urther elaborated in eight FP's, which were later de-veloped into ten (or urther reading on the development (see Vargo & Lusch,a). A short description o the ten premises is presented in able .

Foundational premises of S-D logic

Foundational premise

FP1 Service is the fundamental basis of exchange.FP2 Indirect exchange masks the fundamental

basisof exchange.FP3 Goods are a distribution mechanism for

service provision.FP4 Operant resources are the fundamental source

of competitive advantage.

FP5 All economies are service economies.FP6 The customer is always a co-creator of value.FP7 The enterprise can not deliver value, but only offer value propositions.FP8 A service-centered view is inherently customer oriented and relational.FP9 All social and economic actors are resource integrators.FP10 Value is always uniquely and phenomenologi

cally determined by the beneficiary.

Premisenumber

able . Te Foundational premises o S-D logic, adapted rom

(Vargo & Lusch, a).



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Te authors returned to early economic theories to argue:

Te S-D logic view o exchange undamentally challenges the oundation o econom-ics (Vargo & Lusch, ), though in a real sense, it recaptures Smiths () original

notions o applied, specialized knowledge and skills (service) and value-in-use (real

value) as primary." (Vargo, et al., :).

Vargo and Lusch (a) proposed that goods and services are means orservice provision in FP and FP , see able . In effect, goods and servicesare means or value creation.Tis broke the product-services dichotomy, andemphasized the importance o the actual use situation. In FP-FP the relation

between the company and the customers is brought orward as key or value

creation and as an important resource in value co-creation.Specifically, the understanding o value-in-use is interesting, even more so

when developed into value-in-context. Te latters ocus on the situation where

the value is created is undamentally different, as well as in acknowledgingpeople to be part o this value-creation situation.

Value in use and context

Vargo and Luschs (; a) notion o value creation differs rom the tradi-

tional notion o value creation as a sequential process, the so-called value-in-exchange based in the goods dominant logic, where the value is destroyed when

consumed (Vargo & Akaka, ). Instead, services are usually described asprocesses in which the users are actively taking part in the interaction with the

service provider (Shostack, ). Te user is co-creator in the value creationprocess; the customer then determines the value o this process at the moment

o use, which is called value-in-use.

I the user defines the value, in use, the situation in which the person issituated is important; this also highlights the time and place dimensions andnetwork relationships as key variables (Vargo, et al., ). By the combina-

tion o FP and FP: value is uniquely and phenomenologically determinedby the beneficiary. (ibid.), suggesting that value-in-use is extended to value-in-context. From the providers perspective, this means that the same service de-livery process might generate different values or different users depending onthe context. Value-in-context is a concept that is debated but I find it interesting

rom a design perspective since it emphasizes the contextual nature.



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Te understanding o value as created in use and in context, rather thanaccumulated in a production process, was previously present in the Austra-

lian School o Economics (see Wieser, ). Key principles were that value issituated, individual, and conceived as value-in-use, hence very similar to the keyconcepts o S-D logic in these aspects. Heskett () brought orward the Aus-

trian school as a useul perspective or understanding how design creates value.

Value is co-created

Service and goods create a single customer experience rom the customer point

o view. Firms cannot deliver value, instead value is co-created with the cus-tomer (Vargo & Lusch, ; a). Consequently customer participation

and co-creation have crucial roles in recent service marketing literature, orexample, Grnroos (). Other scholars have also explored the co-production

o value, as well as its contextual nature (e.g., Normann et al., ). But whilethe customer determines the value o service innovation, it is the firm that isresponsible or developing the proposition (Jaworski & Kohli, ), or oracilitating and organizing the collaboration process (Payne, Storbacka, & Frow,

; Piller, Ihl, & Vossen, ).Tere are several implications o S-D logic perspective in relation to how the

firm understands the value creation process. Te changed perspective requires

other methods and tools than traditional marketing approaches or understand-

ing the co-creational situation, both in the realization o value and in the develop-

ment processes. From a design perspective, implications or the new servicedevelopment and innovation processes are particularly interesting.

SERVICE INNOVATION

Te research in service innovation mirrors the early discussions within the ser-

vice marketing field, including the difference between services and productsand to what extent the innovation processes are different or the two (Gallouj

& Weinstein, ). However, the behavioral aspects are emphasized in inno-vation. Innovation in service is most ofen either technological or behavioral,as well as combination o the two. Tus innovation in service can be seen asrenewal o human behavior (Sundbo, :) based on the view o serviceas undamentally a behavioral act (ibid.,:). Further, innovation in service is

most ofen seen as a process (Gallouj & Weinstein, ).



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Introducing different models o service innovation, Gallouj & Weinsten() break the distinction o radical and non-radical innovations. Among

these models ad-hoc innovation stands out as typically characteristic or highknowledge intensity activities; other models include recombination innovationand ormalization innovation. Other sources claim that the degree o innova-tion in service is almost impossible to define due to its complexity and diversity(Edvardsson, Gustasson, Johnson, & Sandn, ).

In line with the suggestion o service innovation based on knowledge andskills, several scholars discuss the implications o S-D logic perspective (Michel,

S. Brown, & Gallan, a; Ordanini & Parasuraman, ; Payne, et al., ).

Tis research redefines the structures and demands or what is to be consid-ered as radical/discontinuous or incremental innovation and how these arise. In

their empirical study, Michel et al. (a) argue that discontinuous innovationaccording to a S-D logic perspective can arise along two dimensions: changes in

the roles o the customers, and changes in the firms value creation. Discontinu-

ous innovation is defined as significantly changing how customers co-createvalue, and significantly affects market size, prices, revenues, and so on. Accord-

ing to the authors, innovation in service would be to innovate customers, based

on their three roles: users, buyersandpayers, instead o products (Michel, S.Brown, & Gallan, b).In addition the firms value creation is changed inthree possible ways: ) knowledge is embedded in objects, ) resources are and

integrated or divided within the firm and in relation to the customers, and )knowledge and resources are distributed among a number o parties involved in

the value co-creation. According to this study discontinuous innovation always

significantly alters one o the dimensions o the firms value creation, and at least

one or some combination o the customer roles.Building on the above-mentioned study, Ordanini & Parasuman () pro-

posed a ramework connecting two acets o service innovation, volume andradicalness, and their effect on two types o firm perormance, revenue growth

and change in EBI. Tey used their developed ramework in an empiricalanalysis that explored relations between contact employee participation,

customer collaboration and customer orientation. Customer collaboration wasmeasured through the richness and requency o customer interactions andcustomer orientation was measured in relation to culture and decision-making.

Te authors concluded that there is no trade off when working with both radi-

cal and incremental innovation simultaneously. Tey urther suggested that



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customer orientation osters radical innovation; however, customer collabora-tion contributes to innovation volume (ibid.).

Te first study (Michel et al., a), argued or the importance o under-standing what constitutes a discontinuous innovation through a S-D logicperspective, the other study (Ordanini & Parasuman, ), ocused on thefirms internal activities and strategies or innovation in service, specifically inrelation to involvement o customers and employees. Both studies emphasized

the importance and complexity o understanding the integration o resourcesand knowledge.

In relation to design, the proposition o innovating customers (Michel,et al., a) can be seen as a reraming o what the design object actually is.Furthermore, the study questions i t

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