Service Design: An Appraisal

Roberto Saco, Owner and Principal, Aporia Advisors; Alexis Goncalves, Independent Consultant, Business Innovation
From the Design Management Review, Winter 2008

Consultants Saco and Goncalves offer an overview of the field and practice of service design, including a definition (not as odd as it sounds, considering the wealth and breadth of issues that contribute to the design of services) and a look at how such companies as Ritz-Carlton, Herman Miller, and Egg Banking incorporate service into their design strategies. They also discuss trends in service design, including IBM's SSME (service science, management, and engineering) initiative, which seeks to encourage service-related research, and the UK Design Council's RED project, which explores the impact of design on social issues. The authors end with some practical advice (such as, "To make a significant impact, service design practitioners must look at entire ecosystems rather than at isolated problems"), and praise prototyping and an open design architecture that allows for ongoing flexibility as tools for improving services.

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