Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.

This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant. Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges. Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design

State-of-the-art in product service-systems

A Product Service-System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarises available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges

Visualising product-service system business models

Copyright © 2014. Copyright in each paper in this conference’s proceedings is the property of the author(s). Permission is granted to reproduce copies of these works for purposes relevant to the above conference, provided that the author(s), source and copyright notice are included on each copy. For other uses, including extended quotation, please contact the author(s).The paper addresses the issue of how to visualise innovative business models at various stages of the design and development process. The focus is on a particular type of business model, defined Product-Service Systems (PSSs), characterised by an integrated product-service offering, but can be generalised to other business model innovations. The paper presents a visualisation system based on a formalised business model ontology and a set of visualisation tools, and discusses how it can be used to enhance internal and external communication and improve dialogue and co-design activities inside the company and with external stakeholders

Designing a product service system in a social framework: methodological and ethical considerations

Macroscopic social and economic changes in the last few years are forcing business companies and public institutions to redefine their approach to social intervention, focusing on local and highly individualised solutions. This change is also calling for a new design approach. The challenge for designers is not only to be able to provide local and highly individualised solutions, but also to propose strategies to transfer and reproduce the solutions, or part of them, into different local contexts, thus creating economy of scope. This would be possible by using forms of codification and modularisation of the most relevant components in local solutions. The code refers to the organisational knowledge included in local components and the way each component interacts with the others. Like software systems, local product-service systems can be built upon a source code. This paper will illustrate how this process was developed in a concrete case. Through this case the authors analyse the possibility to build something similar to a source code for initiatives based on social interaction and investigate the process of construction of such a code Furthermore, the author discuss differences and analogies between design intervention in a social context and in the normal business context. The question of codification suggests a methodological approach for supporting transferability both in the problem space (dealing with complexity) and in the solution space (dealing with contingency). The analysis of differences and similarities between business- and socially-oriented processes suggests a new role for designers and new opportunities for innovation. Keywords: Product Service Systems, Methodology, Design and Morality, Codification, Transferability</p

The Managed Service Paradox

This paper examines the contrasts in the provision of managed service in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. It highlights the polarization between infrastructure services that are growing in scale and increasingly becoming a commoditized, and customized or even one-of-a-kind service projects. The paper refers to the approaches taken by three highly innovative advanced service companies, IBM, Ericsson, and Cable & Wireless, to package and deliver ICT service on a more industrialized basis. The authors identify the six-stage process that describes these companies’ journeys to date from. They explore the challenges these companies faced on that journey as well those currently facing them as they move to a higher degree of industrialization. To address these challenges, the authors propose a model with three axes: offering development, service delivery, and go to market. The model demonstrates how the increasing industrialization of managed service requires an approach integrating all three of these dimensions. They also show that strong governance is required to address the impacts of technological evolution, marketplace dynamics, and corporate culture. The paper has formed the basis of the academic and executive education programs taught at both Imperial College and is the heart of the new service design masters program at the Royal College of Art. Because of its relevance to large industrial companies seeking to transition from an industrial offering to a service or solution led offering, the paper has been turned into a course that has been delivered to Arup, Vodafone, Finmeccanica, Telefonica, Samsung and Laing O’Rourke to date and this programme has been delivered by the authors in Korea, Taiwan, US and the UK

Design Opportunities in Service-Product Combined Systems

This paper aims to examine recent research issues related to the integration of service and product in view of industrial design. Further, it attempts to identify new opportunities for further research regarding “product-servicization” vs. “service-productization”. In the continued efforts to provide the users with fuller experiences, one major trend is the blending of products and services. Much existing research seems to either present cases or propose frameworks regarding the ‘connection’, rather than ‘integration’ between products and services. Broadly, two major approaches seem to exist in this area: 1. product-servicization, 2. service-productization. The former generally indicates adding more services to existing products, whereas the latter generally refers to making services tangible and/or visible in the form of a product. However, findings of an extensive literature search conducted for this study suggest one important deficiency in dealing with service issues around the product: the ‘integration’ between the actual product design and service elements for supporting new service-product system. That is the rationale behind this research, an attempt to investigate the possibility for the integration of product design and service factors which could be embedded in the design of product itself in new service-product system. This paper is largely based on qualitative research. New design research opportunities are identified by qualitatively analyzing relevant literature, synthesizing the information and presenting some cases to support the main argument of the research. Design-led Service-Productization is not, and should not be re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Rather, it should bring practical and tangible design issues related to new service-product system. Findings suggest that this approach could provide a new model of new product development integrated with a service scheme, which is a more proactive approach than “product-servicization”. Further development of this research could lead to establishing a framework for the Design-led Service-Product Integration. Keywords: Product-servicization; Industrial design; Service; Product; Integration</p

Sustainable Value Proposition Design in a Product-Service System

Many companies have started to add services to their tangible products in order to defend themselves from increased competition from low-cost economies. Research regarding the transition towards product-service systems (PSS) and how the PSS providers' business models are affected exists, but there is a lack of research regarding how the suppliers to the PSS providers are affected by the transition towards PSS. Therefore, this thesis studies the situation for a supplier/partner to an OEM that has changed their business model to a PSS providing one. As the first step in a development of a new business model aims this thesis to provide guidelines for how to set up value propositions suitable for a supplier/partner in this new environment. When technologically complex products, such as aircraft engines, are provided through PSS offerings it is hard to translate customer needs into quality parameters, which makes it hard to sustain the value to customer over time. Therefore, how to keep the value offering sustainable over time is also investigated in this thesis. The aim of this study was to investigate how a sustainable value proposition can be designed for a product and technology supplier/partner to an OEM that offers PSS solutions. The research has been performed through studying relevant literature and collecting empirical data from a case company through semi-structured interviews and a workshop. The case company in this research is Volvo Aero Corporation (VAC). The empirical findings show that VAC wants to offer product-service bundled solution, which fit the whole spectra of PSS value propositions, to their partners/customers. To be able to deliver these different types of product-service bundled solutions different value propositions that suit the different kinds of PSS offerings are needed. Requirements that must be fulfilled to be able to offer and deliver the different types of value propositions exist in terms of securing sufficient information access, aligning the incentives of all actors involved and achieving an internal consensus of what is delivered

Encouraging Sustainable Urban Access: An Exploratory Student Approach to Design of Product Service Systems

Urban access is a key trans-disciplinary design axiom looking to ensure that every member of the society can reach those locations and resources one needs for a sustainable standard of living and productivity. This should be achieved in a way that does not deprive others from their right to access the same urban environment. Crafting the future of urban transportation design is a dynamic process that depends on developing a thorough understanding of the complexity of the human needs that associate with delivering ways to support urban access and, in particular, more sustainable and socially inclusive mobility patterns. New market demands and customer expectations force public and private organisations to expand their commitment to cross-border collaborations to provide attractive alternative transport modes. This paper discusses the challenge of utilizing design innovation as a tool for eco-branding and how an exploratory approach to this has been used in a post-graduate course in Visual Brand Identity and Product Design. Seven research teams, closely guided by the authors, were affiliated with designing an innovative hypothetical bike-sharing scheme for the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, with the potential to captivate road users’ acceptability. An overall description of the project concept and a brief summary of the results produced are presented herein. More specifically, this paper concentrates solely on one of the most innovative projects delivered within the course and discusses how the students adopted the challenge, as well as the actual project outcome and its contribution to the overall learning experience

Orchestration of the Marketing Strategy under Competitive Dynamics

Constructing suitable marketing strategy and implementing it effectively is an art and science both like orchestration of a symphony. The discussion in this paper blends this analogy with the science of marketing demonstrating the levels of strategy development in a competitive marketplace. The paper presents the marketing-mix in contemporary context and argues that performance of a marketing firm can be maximized, when a firm develops a creative marketing strategy and achieves marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. The discussion in the paper reveals that marketing managers of different levels simultaneously operate within the firm and perceive the need for strategy development with varied preferences. A consequence of this is development of robust strategies and their effective implementation which, in turn, leads to increased market performance. Thus, it is important for researchers to investigate various strategy integration perspectives and this paper provides guidance by reviewing the existing literature.Marketing strategy, strategy integration, marketing-mix, customer value,strategy implementation, market competition, risk factors, brand building, customer centric strategy, routes to market

An Ontology for Product-Service Systems

Industries are transforming their business strategy from a product-centric to a more service-centric nature by bundling products and services into integrated solutions to enhance the relationship between their customers. Since Product- Service Systems design research is currently at a rudimentary stage, the development of a robust ontology for this area would be helpful. The advantages of a standardized ontology are that it could help researchers and practitioners to communicate their views without ambiguity and thus encourage the conception and implementation of useful methods and tools. In this paper, an initial structure of a PSS ontology from the design perspective is proposed and evaluated