Designing services in science and technology-based enterprises

Lead Research Organisation: University of Oxford
Department Name: Politics and International Relations

Abstract

The project responds to two developments. Firstly, the growing importance of services, economically, socially and culturally, and the emerging discipline of service design, which has few direct links with management research. Secondly, efforts by university based researchers to exploit their research through setting uop commercial enterprises, especially in science and technology, sometimes offering services.

This project has two intertwined elements:

(a) An interdisciplinary conversation taking place over 12 months about service design, and in particular the design of services within science and technology based enterprises.
Participants include social scientists working within a business school; service and
interaction designers; entrepreneurs from science and technology based enterprises;
researchers working within computing and environmental sciences; practitioners from
large IT services companies; and MBA students. The task of this varied group of approximately 25 people is to share knowledge, skills and experience about service
design; and to create a shared vocabulary about designing services in science and
technology based enterprises.

(b) Four design-led research projects taking place over three months, in which a science or technology based enterprise offering, or planning to offer services, is paired with a
design company. Designers qill use design approaches and design tools such as
creating scenarios, modelling, and paper prototyping, to help develop services, or test
assumptions within existing services. The findings from these projects are the 'data'
feeding the wider conversation.

Both parts of the project will be documented with photography, video and interviews, and made public via the web. Other outputs include an illustrated document sharing the vocabulary for discussing service design generated within the project; and academic papers for the design research community and others.

The project is hosted by a business school, with research strengths in innovation, strategy and the social sciences of organisations, within a university with a strong science and technology research culture and a track record in commercialising research. We anticipate it will have effects within the three main groups of participants: academics within business schools who study services; service designers; and science and technology entrepreneurs.

Publications

10 25 50
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Kimbell L (2015) Rethinking Design Thinking: Part II in Design and Culture

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Kimbell L (2015) Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I in Design and Culture

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Kimbell, L (2009) Design and Creativity

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Kimbell, L (2011) Design for Services

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Kimbell, L. (2009) Insights from Service Design Practice in Proceedings of the 8th European Academy Of Design Conference - 1st, 2nd & 3rd April 2009, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland

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Kimbell, L. (2011) Designing for Service as One Way of Designing Services in International Journal of Design

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New, S (2013) Chimps, Designers, Consultants and Empathy: A "Theory of Mind" for Service Design in Proceedings of 2nd CAMBRIDGE ACADEMIC DESIGN MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE, 4 - 5 SEPTEMBER 2013

 
Title What do service designers do? The Oxford study of designing for services 
Description A short film based on an ethnographic study into how professional service designers approach designing services in science and technology based enterprises. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2008 
Impact The impact of making this short film was to bring to a broader audience, in particular design practitioners, what is involved in service design. At the time of the study and producing the film, there was very little published academic research or indeed practitioner activity which adopted the term "service design". This film brought the material practices of self-named service designers into view. 
 
Description Through this multi-disciplinary study into the emerging practice known as service design, we discovered
(a) that the approach was relevant to science and technology based enterprises who benefitted from the focus on end users and customers of their services
(b) professional service designers approach the design of services by looking holistically at the people, digital and material 'touchpoints', technologies, processes and organisational actors involved
(c) that the academic study of this area benefits from interdisciplinary approaches including design studies, several management fields including strategy, operations and marketing, and sociology.

This award was a very early exploration of the then emergent field of "service design". By bringing together several disciplines from the outset, rather than focussing on designers' accounts of service design, this project was important in making links across disciplines which served to shape the research area.
Exploitation Route The approach of involving academics from several fields, when discussing an emergent field, helped open up different ways of understanding it.
The project design, involving five collaborative workshops, shaping and learning from an ethnographic study into three collaborative projects in which service designers consulted for tech enterprises, produced a rich, collective inquiry for both the academics and practitioners.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Education

Financial Services

and Management Consultancy

Healthcare

Leisure Activities

including Sports

Recreation and Tourism

Government

Democracy and Justice

Manufacturing

including Industrial Biotechology

 
Description The findings from this multi-disciplinary project have shaped the creation of an emerging field of practice and research: service design. By involving academics and practitioners from design, several management fields and sociologists to shape a conversation about what is involved in designing for services, this project impacted the field by shifting it away from being dominated by creative design research and design studies. Since this research was completed, the field of service design has grown substantially and now has a subfield of service design research. Within this broad domain there are now specialist areas of research such as healthcare service design emphasising patient experiences, and the emergence of service design teams in financial services. There are now active researchers focussing on these sub-sectors. Secondly, within government there is growing interest in service design recognising the importance of how government interacts with citizens, users and beneficiaries of public services. Because the findings from this research included a report drawing on several different disciplines, a short video and a blog, the research was widely accessible to non-academics. Academic outputs (book chapters, papers at conferences) followed the end of the award. A book building on some of the research findings is widely used in MA design and some MBA courses meaning that the original research influences practice through post-graduate teaching and executive education.
First Year Of Impact 2007
Sector Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Societal

Economic

Policy & public services

 
Title Ethnographic video of interactions between sets of participants - design consultancies and technology enterprises 
Description Ethnographic video of interactions between design consultancies and technology enterprises 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2008 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None 
 
Description Service Design Research 
Organisation Lancaster University
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Invited to be on the advisory board on an AHRC research network during 2013-2014.
Collaborator Contribution Advised the researchers on developments in service design research. Spoken at an event.
Impact Report summarising the emerging academic field of service design and its variants.
Start Year 2013