Thanks to Terry, Ken and Nicola for confirming my hunch that Service
Design has been around for a long time and that he 'art and design
community' is just one of the more recent communities to have taken an
interest in this area.

Also, I'm please to continue this discussion on list.

I'd like to continue with the three research questions I raised earlier:
1. What evidence is being offered to business by Service Designers on
the potential for Service Design to offer a return on investment (ROI)
2. How do Service Designers go about delimiting or changing the
boundary of the Service they design
3. Are there limits to the complexity of a Service beyond which a
designer cannot exercise control.

Any takers?

David
--

blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au

Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •

Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
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60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068




On 08/04/2009, at 10:51 AM, Terence Love wrote:

> Hi Nicola,
>
> You are right about history of service design the UK. Design of
> service
> delivery was taught to youth workers in the 1970s - an explicit
> issue was
> how to design youth service to specific circumstances and specific
> groups of
> young people. In 1960s, restaurant services were already being
> designed in a
> socio-tech manner that integrated the service behaviours of staff to
> customers with a technical support of that service. I remember the
> 300 or so
> seat BHS restaurant in Manchester with its formalized processes
> particularly
> for managing clearing tables (used hidden conveyors behind false walls
> delivering dirty pots to a team of people managing a large dishwasher.
> Earlier still, by 1951 Lyons Tea Houses had a designed an ordering
> service
> that combined a phone-based call centre with perhaps the earliest
> used of a
> computer in services design. That use of a computer in service
> design led
> quickly to a new business venture - LEO computers. Discussion about
> service
> design was commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s following Illich's
> critical
> reviews of several service professions (Medicine, Health, Religion and
> Design - remember 'Tools for Conviviality'?). Much earlier were the
> Victorian guides for etiquette, butlering, diplomacy and nursing,
> and many
> aspects of the Catholic Church's education for religious
> professionals. All
> of these can be seen to be in the service design tradition.
> Cheers,
> Terry
> ____________________
>
> Dr. Terence Love, FRDS, AMIMechE, PMACM
>
> Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research
> Group
> Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
> Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
> Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
> Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
> Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
> UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
> Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
> Development
> Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
> ____________________
>
> ____________________
>
> Dr. Terence Love, FRDS, AMIMechE, PMACM
>
> Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research
> Group
> Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
> Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre Curtin
> University, PO Box
> U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
> Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
> Visiting
> Professor, Member of Scientific Council UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon,
> Portugal
> Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
> Development
> Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
> ____________________
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related
> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Nicola
> Morelli
> Sent: Wednesday, 8 April 2009 3:27 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Service Design
>
> HI Sabine, Ken and all the others participating to this interesting
> discussion.
> I agree with Ken that Service Design is not new, and there is a wide
> range
> of studies on this topic, especially in marketing and management;
> one of the
> most relevant reference designers are still using is by Lynn
> Shostack,(1982)
> a marketing paper on service blueprinting. Also the contribution of
> Norman
> and Ramirez and others have been the basis for the discussion on
> service
> design in the design discipline. I've never had a chance to discuss
> this
> with Sabine, but I had several discussions on this literature with
> Daniela,
> who is working with Sabine on this topic. What is new, however is the
> contribution of the design discipline.
> Here, I agree with Sabine, the literature is still quite poor. I've
> worked a
> bit in this area, mainly in the definition of some methodologies
> that cover
> specific aspects of service design, such as time, experience and
> interaction. However I can still see big gaps in the literature and
> large
> areas that are not properly covered.