The Object of Service Design

Abstract

Introduction Recent decades have witnessed a steep increase in service research springing from disciplines as diverse as economics, management, and engineering. For the most part, this interest is a response to the expansion of the service sector in the last century and the consequent penetration of services in almost all areas of industrial activity and contemporary life. Services now represent an undeniable force behind labor and value creation in the world economy. Until recent years, however, design approached services as if they were mere appendages to goods. It is not uncommon to still observe in design discourse the surreptitious inclusion of services in expressions like “product/service” or “product (and service),” without a deeper explanation of the meaning of these compound terms. By implication, the fixation on goods persists, which is understandable considering design’s historical role in giving shape to the material culture of modernity. But since the advent of post-industrial societies, the half-hearted integration of services into design discourse is increasingly out of touch with the times. Services must receive the attention they deserve so as to unpack the concept and place it in the center of design thought and action. Fortunately, there are signs within the design community of a movement to advance service design.1 One of the issues motivating current research is the idea that service designers create multiple contacts, or touchpoints, between service organizations and their clients, including material artifacts, environments, interpersonal encounters, and more.2 The identification of touchpoints as an object of service design is a clear step away from the imposition of the goods-centered paradigms of the past. However, touchpoints remain poorly conceptualized from a design perspective. At best, their origins in service research are traced back to the notion of service evidence introduced in the seminal writings of G. Lynn Shostack in marketing.3 Unfortunately, as we argue below, such a portrayal of touchpoints places service design on the wrong track, because it turns the design of services into a peripheral activity—namely, that of “accessorizing” an essentially intangible relation between service providers and their clients. The lack of clarity over the object of service design is aggravated by the superficial treatment in design scholarship of the alternative concepts and theories found in the service literature. In addition to Shostack, researchers from multiple backgrounds

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