Creating possibilities for service design innovation

Frederick van Amstel http://fredvanamstel.com

Architecture and Design SchoolDigital Design

PUCPR

What is service design?

•The practice of designing networks of people, places and technologies

• Not every aspect of a service can be designed since it relies a lot on people

• Service design includes people who use and deliver the service in the design (co-design)

• Create new possibilities for other activites

This is how service design looks like: a lot of co-design (ServiceDesignSprints.com)

Products work as barriers between company and market. Services work as infrastructure.

Service design focuses on co-creating value at the

boundaries – not at the core – of organizations.

Value co-creation at the boundaries of an organization(Amstel, 2015)

Producer

Exchanging valueCocreator

Client

Co-creating value

Creating value

New ideas to co-create value at the boundaries

Implementing such ideas is difficult: people don’t want to change while technology is not available.

Nelson Mandela reminds us that possibilities change.

The aim of service design is to create possibilities for other

activities.

Where possibilities come from

Creating new possibilities

• Identify what is considered to be possible and impossible

• Search for new possibilities outside the space of possibilities (beyond what is already considered)

• Confront the impossible with the possible

• Help people realize it is possible by themselves

“Thinking inside the box” inquiry: asking everyone about what they considered to be possible and impossible to change in an activity

The possible

The impossible

Simulations, scenarios and dramas to explore possibilities:HEAD game by Julia Garde

Simulations, scenarios and dramas to explore possibilities:environmental center in Almelo

Simulations, scenarios and dramas to explore possibilities:Clinics Hospital of Paraná

Simulations, scenarios and dramas to explore possibilities:Theater of the Oppressed for design thinking

Amstel, Frederick M.C. van and Garde, Julia. Games to explore the possibilities of space and the space of possibilities in service design. Simulation & Gaming, 47 (5),

2016, p. 628-650.

Seeing an object as it is. (certainty, righteously, closed)

XSeeing an object as it could be.(uncertainty, ambiguity, open)

Sketching is one the best ways to see objects as they could be. It is very different from observational drawing.

Few people can sketch, hence you need other materials to cocreate objects as they could be.

Expansive design expands the possibilities for the design object.

Reductive design reduces the possibilities for the design object.

Object expansion changes everything in an activity, yet it faces resistance from the old object which coexists with the new

people

instruments

community

rules division of labor

new objectx

old objectresult

Shared objects co-created by different activities are temporary, but may lead to a new activity.

people

instruments

community

rules division of labor

instruments

community

rules division of labor

peopleshared object

Network reconfiguration is triggered by small changes and spread through ripple effect.

Service design innovation

•Services are activities, not technologies

• Service innovation means the whole activity changes (object expansion)

• Service innovation is triggered by co-creation at the boundaries (shared objects)

• Service innovation spread through other services (network reconfiguration)

Exercise•Visualize the entire activity of a new service

•Map the relationship to other activities

people

instruments

community

rules division of labor

object result

Thank you!

Frederick van Amstel http://fredvanamstel.com

Architecture and Design SchoolDigital Design

PUCPR