HI Ken,
Perhaps I seem to be saying that management is not a design field, but I did not say that and I did not want to say that... In fact I agree very much with you about Norman's approach, it is a designerly approach and I would say that many of the contributions in the design area, including my work, are based on Norman's approach. My point is that, starting from Norman's work (and the work on other people), designers are proposing different points of view. I think that their idea of value co-production (Norman and Ramirez 1997), for instance, opens a broad avenue for innovation in service design, which is still to be explored, and here designers can propose inedited perspectives.

Perhaps an example would explain better, here. I will mention a small discussion I had on a journal with Bill Hollins, about different perspective in designing services
One of the main characteristics of services is that time is a very relevant factor, unlike products which are relatively unchanged in time (if we do not consider products' decay or wearing out during use, etc). Norman (as well as Shostack) emphasized this factor and pointed out the need to design time. However there are different perspectives of designing time: a functional perspective (perhaps more focused on management or engineering, but not necessarily a management perspective) would try to reduce time waste (e.g. cutting waiting time at the bank), whereas a different perspective may consider using that time for changing the user experience and possibly giving the user the possibility to be more informed about how to use the service (e.g. knowing what kind of procedures, included bank services, are needed for buying a new house). The example of the bank comes from a real case of a bank in Denmark which reinvented the bank experience, in order to improve user experience in waiting time. The perspective proposed in this case is very close to what I would expect a designer could propose.
In fact in this case the redesign was not suggested by a designer, but by the Marketing Manager of the bank... (I have shortly illustrated this case in a paper for a conference in 2007, see reference).
There is also another broad area, which is public services, which is now being considered by governments as crucial (as I mentioned in my previous post) and can be strongly influenced by the approach of value co-production, but I have not seen to many examples of redesign of public services in the existing literature, whereas I've seen many examples in real cases promoted by design studios. This, again does not mean that the area of management cannot contribute to the debate, but just to say that many management studies had a focus on business services, whereas the redesign of public service will probably require different strategies. I would expect that the contributions to this area to come from designers, management and even from politicians (Several documents from the UK government, the EU and individual politicians have introduced concepts, such as active welfare, active citizenship and application of the principle of subsidiarity, which suggest a different role for users and even a different way to see mass customization)

So I totally agree with you when you say that management is a design field, but my point is that several insights are coming from the design discipline (but not necessarily from designers), and from real cases of service design which would suggest different perspectives and make the debate on service design much richer and more interesting.
Perhaps it is not a question of disciplines but rather a research for new perspectives...

Ciao
Nicola

PS
Another question may be more focused on methods and concerns the way this value co-production could happen. Are we sure that whoever design a service has the right methodological toolbox to involve users as co-producers? Here again different disciplines proposed different methods. The whole area of user-centred design, participatory design, etc may be explored to find methods and strategies to include users as co-producers. Also, new representation techniques need to be found, that make the co-production system easy to understand for users that are not supposed to have the tools to interpret technical graphic notations... but perhaps the methodological question would make this post too long.

References
Normann, R. and R. Ramirez (1994). Desiging Interactive Strategy. From Value Chain to Value Constellation. New York, John Wiley and Sons.
Morelli, N. and L. M. Nielsen (2007). Mass Customisation and Highly Individualised Solutions. Stretching Mass Customisation Beyond the Traditional Paradigm of Industrial Production. MCPC 07. The 2007 Word Conference on Mass Customisation and Personalisation, Boston, Montreal.
Shostack, L. G. (1982). "How to Design a Service." European Journal of Marketing 16(1): 49-63.




-----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 Ken Friedman
Sent: 7. april 2009 23:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Service Design

Hi, Nicola,

Here I want to agree -- but only in part. In saying the the design field has something different to contribute to service design as contrasted with management, you seem to be saying that management is not a design field. That's where I disagree.

Some management people take a managerialist view. Others take a design view. Richard Normann takes a design view.

The 1998 book Designing Interactive Strategy: From Value Chain to Value Constellation by Rafael Ramirez and Richard Normann is a case in point. Using the term "co-production," they essentially discuss what we generally call co-design. Normann's Reframing Business is another good example.