Service innovation and participatory approach

Service innovation and participatory approach

The traditional chain of service design – ideate, design, implement – based on the service manager/owner vision is no longer enough to get to provide processes and services that meet the current scenarios. The phases of ideation and design are the steps in which the value creation start and it cannot take place separately from the “place” (market, society) where it will be exchanged.

service-design-thinking-process
Traditional service design process.

In addition to this, citizens, customers, end-users cannot be still intended as passive entities, recipients of the services and in particular public services. Current social paradigms and design perspectives imply that they enter as active participants or collaborators in the value creation process, including the service design. This represent a very relevant evolution, that make new services aware of and shaped by different points of view, needs, as well as skills and resources that people bring.

The centrality of the persons is a founding principle of many design approaches, which from ergonomics to design, include systematic methods and techniques of participation and inclusion of end-users in the processes not only of design, but also of consumption, experience, production, communication, etc.

The paradigm-shift from a vertical to a participatory process, including places and persons outside the design team and the service providers, enriches the definition of new service scenarios, set up and define more sensitive success metrics, performances and value exchange mechanisms. The knowledge of the real context of destination in terms of places, habits, procedures where target users, is essential for design approaches commonly applied in the field of innovation, such as the Service Design (Polaine et al. 2013), the User-Centred Design (IDEO, 2015).

ideo_ucd
IDEO Human centred design (Or User centred design)

The design method that is based on participatory practices that actively involve stakeholders and end-users in the design process is known as co-design. Engaging different actors, the co-design implementation requires a careful planning and – as said – a wide understanding of target domain. In co-design method, participants act as designers working with other experts of domains, in a dialogue on a common problem and on possible solutions that can evolve in prototypes or shared artefacts (Stepanek, 2015). Through dedicated techniques, the co-design allows non-designers to articulate design proposals as a useful starting point for further professional developments (Sanders et al., 2010). The collaborative design activities allow to widen the design team’s vision and develop a situated knowledge of complex domains. Moreover, the engagement of end-users helps in the design of usable (effective, efficient and satisfying) solutions.

In addition, co-design is considered as a useful approach in digital transformation processes: allowing citizens, administrators, experts to work on emerging issues and providing them design-specific tools to support their problem-solving abilities, over producing a number of negotiated and shared ideas, it empowers participants and commit them for the further implementation and monitoring phases.

References:

  • Polaine, A., Løvlie, L. and Reason, R. (2013). Service Design. From Insight to Implementation. New York: Rosenfeld Media.
  • IDEO (2015). The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design. ISBN: 978-0-9914063-1-9.
  • Stepanek, M. (2015) Building With, Not For. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved from:
    https://ssir.org/articles/entry/building_with_not_for (May, 2017).
  • Sanders, E.B.-N. Brandt, E., Binder, T. (2008) A Framework for Organizing the Tools and Techniques of
    Participatory Design. PDC ’10 Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, pp. 195-
    198.

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