Designing Better Services : A Strategic Approach from Design to Evaluation

120 Pages·2017·2.459 MB·English

by  Foglieni, Francesca, Maffei, Stefano, Villari, Beatrice

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN APPLIED SCIENCES AND
TECHNOLOGY  POLIMI SPRINGER BRIEFS
Francesca Foglieni
Beatrice Villari
Stefano Maffei
Designing Better
Services
A Strategic
Approach
from Design to
Evaluation
SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences
and Technology
PoliMI SpringerBriefs
Editorial Board
Barbara Pernici, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Stefano Della Torre, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Bianca M. Colosimo, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Tiziano Faravelli, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Roberto Paolucci, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Silvia Piardi, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11159
http://www.polimi.it
Francesca Foglieni Beatrice Villari
(cid:129)
Stefano Maffei
Designing Better Services
A Strategic Approach from Design
to Evaluation
123
Francesca Foglieni StefanoMaffei
Department ofDesign Department ofDesign
Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano
Milan Milan
Italy Italy
Beatrice Villari
Department ofDesign
Politecnico di Milano
Milan
Italy
ISSN 2191-530X ISSN 2191-5318 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs inApplied SciencesandTechnology
ISSN 2282-2577 ISSN 2282-2585 (electronic)
PoliMI SpringerBriefs
ISBN978-3-319-63177-6 ISBN978-3-319-63179-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63179-0
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017951055
©TheAuthor(s)2018
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Preface
Theargumentationpresentedinthisbookistheresultofaresearchprocessinitiated
at the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano a few years ago, and matured
thanks to a doctoral research developed by Francesca Foglieni, which constituted
the starting point for the reasoning articulated in these pages. With this text, we
share the urgent need to consider evaluation as a strategic activity that should
becomeanintegralpartofservicedesign,bothintheoryandpractice.Webelieveit
isnecessarytosupportitsroleasaleverofgrowthandchangeinpublicandprivate
organizations,andtodesignbetterservicesthatanswertocurrentsocial,economic
and environmental challenges. This book relies on the idea that service design has
thepowertotriggermeaningfulchanges,butforthistohappennewdirectionsneed
to be envisioned and explored for the discipline to evolve. Applied research pro-
jects,teachingactivitiesandconversationswithexpertcolleaguesandprofessionals
havealsobeenfundamentaltothefulldevelopmentofourvision.Ourpurposeisto
openadebateonatopicthatstilldeservesfurtherinvestigationsinthedisciplinary
fieldaswellasincomparisonwithotherdisciplines.Wehopethatotherresearchers
will share the hypotheses presented here and will prosecute the discussion with
passion, dedication and relevant contributions.
Milan, Italy Francesca Foglieni
June 2017 Beatrice Villari
Stefano Maffei
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 From Service to Service Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1 Service: A Difficult Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 The Service Economy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Service Marketing and Service Management: The Origins
of Service Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.1 From Services as Goods to Services as a Perspective
on Value Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3.2 Core Concepts in Service-Dominant Logic and Their
Relevance for Service Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4 The Emerging Interest in Service Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5 Why Do Services Need Designing?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5.1 Service Design and Design for Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.6 The Strategic Use of Service Design in (Public and Private)
Organizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3 How to (Re)Design Services: From Ideation to Evaluation . . . . . . . . 27
3.1 Designing New Services and Service Redesign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2 The Service Design Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3 The Service Design Process: From Research
to Implementation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.3.1 Understanding People, Contexts and Relationships . . . . . . 34
3.3.2 Defining Service Scenarios and Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.3.3 Developing Service Ideas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
vii
viii Contents
3.3.4 Validating Service Ideas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.5 Supporting the Service Implementation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.4 Including Evaluation in the Service Design Process . . . . . . . . . . . 40
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4 Exploring Evaluation in Service Design Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1 From the Evaluation of Existing Services to the Evaluation
of Service Prototypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1.1 ‘BancoSmart’: A User-Friendly, People-Centered ATM . . . 48
4.1.2 ‘Test Tube Trip’: Improving Patient Safety
by Reducing the Number of Sampling Errors . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.1.3 Designing a ‘New Premium Mobility Service’
for the US Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.1.4 Evaluating the Impact of Service Design Introduction
in Mind Mental Healthcare System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2 Evaluation in Service Design Through Professional Lenses. . . . . . 64
4.3 Toward the Integration of Evaluation Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5 Evaluating Services for a Better Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1 Why Evaluating Services?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1.1 Exploring the Meaning of Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.1.2 Evaluation in the Service Sector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2 Evaluating Services or Evaluating (Service) Design? . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.3 Rethinking the Service Design Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.4 Designing a Service Evaluation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.5 Guidelines for Service Evaluation and Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6 Service Design and Service Evaluation: Challenges and Future
Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.1 Building the Future Service Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
6.2 Measuring the Value of Service Design: A Future Challenge
for Service Designers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.3 An Interpretive Model of Evaluation in Service Design . . . . . . . . 100
6.4 New Competencies for Service Designers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.5 Service Design and Service Evaluation: Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . 107
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Index .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 113
Chapter 1
Introduction
Abstract Theintroductiontothebooktracesthereasonsandtheintentionsbehind
thechoiceoftreatingthetopicofevaluationinconjunctionwithservicedesign,as
wellastheurgencyforsuchadebatetobeopen.Anoverviewofthebookstructure
andthereasoningarticulatedinthefollowingchaptersareprovidedandareflection
on upcoming topics concerning the future of the discipline is proposed.
(cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1)
Keywords Servicedesign Serviceinnovation Serviceevaluation Opendebate
Servicesarebecomingtheleadingdriveroftheeconomy.Servicesareeverywhere:
they represent the main economic lever in the world countries (The World Bank
2017). Moreover, they are fundamental for all those issues regarding the welfare
sphere and the social domains. As a consequence, service design is becoming
increasingly important, in both the private and the public sphere: organizations,
companies, and governments need to provide solutions that employ fewer resour-
ces, are more effective and are tailored to market and citizens’ needs. Service
companies and public administrations are including service design into their pro-
cesses to create better services and to deliver better policies; agencies are
empoweringtheircompetenciesandskillstowardamoreservice-orientedoffering.
Designing services isbecoming an importantissue, notto be considered onlyby a
few practitioners. In this context, evaluating services is a way to design better and
more efficient solutions, to redesign existing offerings, and to support better deci-
sions, in order to create more social and economic value.
This book explores the connections between service evaluation, service inno-
vation, and service design. Considering evaluation as a part of the service design
process requires a renovated approach that includes new methods, tools, and
competencies, and a new mindset to raise awareness of the contribution that
evaluation can make to service innovation. Services are intangible and based on
performances. They are heterogeneous due to the dependency of providers and
userscontexts.Theyperishafterusewhiletheconsumptionandtheproductionare
intrinsically connected (Zeithaml et al. 1985). These characteristics influence the
evaluation process regarding metrics, outcomes, and strategies to be adopted.
©TheAuthor(s)2018 1
F.Foglienietal.,DesigningBetterServices,PoliMISpringerBriefs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63179-0_1
2 1 Introduction
Furthermore, the scale and the diffusion of the service at hand also condition the
way to determine its value.
In the first part of the book, the emphasis is on service value creation, consid-
ering both the provider and the user’s point of view. Service evaluation, indeed, is
mostly referred to the user side regarding, for example, customer satisfaction
processes, often ignoring the provider’s perspective or the interaction between the
two.Ontheotherhand,theevaluationofaservicefromtheorganization’spointof
view ismostly based oneconomicand quantitativeparameters thatrarelyconsider
experiences and quality aspects such as interactions between people. This book
proposes an overview of the evaluation theory and practice reflecting on the con-
nections with service innovation and service design through an explorative path
aimedatintegratingserviceevaluationandservicedesignintoasingleprocess.We
suggestatheoreticalperspectivethatinitiallyoutlinesthekeyfactorsoftheservice
economy by exploring the most important concepts of service innovation, and
subsequently the central ones of the service design approach. After that, we
introduce evaluation as a constitutive part of the design process, focusing on the
importance of evaluating services to provide better design solutions.
To reinforce theconceptsdescribedand totransfer them into theservicedesign
practice, we analyze four cases—developed in the public and private sphere—to
explainhowevaluationiscurrentlycarriedoutwithintheservicedesignprocessto
assess existing services and service ideas. Lastly, a first reflection is done on how
theintegrationofevaluationandservicedesigncanleadtoachangeofperspective
for designing services as a professional practice in different areas.
Reflections on how to merge service evaluation and service design are just in
theirinfancy.Thisbookwantstocontributetoturningonthedebatebylookingfor
connections that do not yet exist within the community of professionals and
researchers, and formulate questions that will find a better-articulated response in
the future. After more than two decades’ evolution of the path of service design
discipline,there isan urgency tobetterunderstand what istheimpact that services
have on people, organizations, and society. This work acts as the result of a col-
lective reflection made through academic research activities, project planning and
development in a constant dialogue with companies, agencies, institutions and
people who have been working on service design and innovation for years.
There is a long road to be traveled. We cannot consider this book as a final
result, but we hope it could be a step to strengthen further the idea of an evolving
journey: we have just started, and we must continue to explore this territory. For
this reason, we are aware of not being exhaustive, since important themes for
evaluation and service design are just briefly mentioned, such as the relationship
with co-design issues, the emergence of design for policy perspective and impact
evaluation, to mention few.
Moreover, society is rapidly changing through new forms of economic and
social transformations: new production and distribution models are emerging, and
theywillalsoaffectthedesign,developmentanddeliveryofservices.Examplesare
the robotization and the machine learning paradigms (Brynjolfsson and McAfee
2016),thedigitaltransformationwithintheIndustry4.0modelandtheso-called4th