Dear all,

I would like to add a few notes to the discussion. They concern research in,
and about, design of services, despite the fact that there exists a service
design practice. This practice is of course an interesting topic in itself.

A colleague professor defined his research, when introducing himself, as the
humanistic and social science research of aging and the elderly. I find this
way of reasoning to be a humble way of expressing the different ways,
reasons and outlets we may have for research. We all can say similar things
about our own research, and describe others research in similar manners. It
opens up for pluralism without degrading the importance of specificity.

Regarding the specific questions David is posing, they will take on
different meanings depending on the assumptions a specific area inscribes in
them
1. What evidence is being offered to business by Service Designers on the
potential for Service Design to offer a return on investment (ROI)
One assumption here is that there is need, from business or from service
design, for Service Design to offer ROI. Or that there is an (or a set of)
agreed upon definition of ROI that stands separate from the theories and
practice of Service Design.
Equally valid research questions could be
- how should ROI-calculus be developed to capture the value added by service
design?
- how does service design reproduce or reinforce ROI as an important
business practice/theory?

3. Are there limits to the complexity of a Service beyond which a designer
cannot exercise control
This is similar to asking if there is a complexity to an economic system
that politics or politicians cannot control. The answer is evident. If we
instead introduce assumptions and rephrase the question, we might have
something to do actual research on.
Assume that services can satisficably be described as the interactions
between humans, between humans and machines and between machines and
machines. A great deal of these interactions are not complex above
computability, meaning that the limits of complexity that might be beyond
control could be those involving human to human interaction. In a service
these interactions might be complex in the sense that they involve several
different actors, with different objectives, agendas, common ground, that
are participating in a co-production of value, and a sense-making process,
as well as having timing issues between these interactions. A reasonable
research question could be: what factors and issues of complexity of human
to human communication in services cannot be handled by service design
through the capacities of interpreting these communications as either
situated actions (Lucy Suchman), or as interactive processes of emergence in
discourse (Herbert Clark).
Other suggested assumptions could be:
- assuming that design is equal to problem solving. This would make it
possible to work with research questions, e.g. based on Joachim Funke's
characteristics of difficult problems, as applied in the specific domain of
services. 
- assuming that control means that there are human behavior that influences
the actions of other human beings within a complex system of situated
actions. This would make it possible to do research based on e.g. cognitive
systems engineering approaches (e.g Erik Hollnagel).


Best regards
/Stefan Holmlid

| Stefan Holmlid, http://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/
| ass professor Interaction and Service Design
| Linköpings universitet, +46 13 28 5633