an emerging field

An Emerging Field
part one
Service Design as an Emerging Field
Birgit Mager

The economic basis of all industrial nations has changed

dramatically in the last four decades from manufacturing to
the provision of information and services. Services now
represent between sixty and seventy percent of the gross
domestic product of developed nations – in Hong Kong this
even amounts to more than 90%. Almost all new companies
being founded and jobs created are in this so-called tertiary
sector.

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 an emerging field
Until the early 1970s the focus of societies and the economy had
been industrial production. I t was there where investments in
research, development, design and marketing were unquestioned. I t
is quite interesting to look at an etymological dictionary – the Latin
word “producere” originally meant “move forward” – so the idea of
progress is already implemented in products and production. The
word “service” on the other hand finds its origin in the meaning
of subalternity or dependency, being the “runner” – and it is not
surprising that until the early years of the 20th century in many con-
texts the economic dimension of services had been totally ignored or
– as Adam Smith put it in 1793 in the “The Wealth of Nations”: “The
labor of some of the most respectable orders ... churchmen, lawyers,
physicians ... is unproductive of any value.“

facts and figures

A study from the UK Design Council in 2005 pointed out that 41%
of all producing companies regard design as an integral component
of their company, and they found that companies that use design are
200% more successful on the stock market. (Design Council 2007)
H owever: only 6% of all service companies see any role at
all for design. I do not want to bore the readers with figures, no
reason to worry, just one more fact: different sources give different
figures on this, but they still indicate the same trend. I n the year
2002 in Germany producing companies invested, per employee on
average, 3270 EUR for research and development whereas service
companies invested only 67 EUR per employee on average. A newer
study says that the production sector in the year 2007 invested
13 000 EUR in “innovation” per employee on average while the
service sector invested 4 000 EUR in innovation activities. (Zentrum
für europäische Wirtschaftsforschung 2008)

service design as emerging field 29

These studies point in the same direction and obviously the
investments into research, development, innovation and
design are less by far in the service sector compared to the
production sector.

slow change – speeding up

Keeping in mind how important the service sector has grown in our
economy and how large the contribution of systematic research,
development and design has been in the production sector, these
figures are quite amazing. Fortunately under pressure of a rapidly
changing market, there have now been noteworthy developments.
While service engineering is still trying to establish itself as a
discipline in universities and in practise, service management is
no longer unusual as a path of study in business administration
courses. Service marketing has established itself internationally and
has brought, and is bringing, inspiring and fundamental findings
into the world of service industries. I n order to create an umbrella
for the multidisciplinary research activities in the field of services
I BM has now for several years supported the interdisciplinary and
international field of service science research, bringing together
experts from all over the world from all different disciplines in order
to share, connect and collaborate.
All over the world successful and innovative
companies are starting to realise the need for service-
specific approaches, methods, roles and structures in order
to make use of the potentials of the service business, and
they are beginning to systematically invest in research
development and design, to create new departments
and roles within their companies in order to continuously

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innovate their service offerings. But still we find that many

an emerging field
companies have not yet moved on and seem to rely on service quality
and service innovation as something that will evolve unattended by
itself. Moreover, it seems that many companies have an amazing
misconception regarding customer satisfaction: while 80% of all
companies believe that their service is good, only 8% of the custom-
ers think so (Bain & Company 2005).

some more facts

A recent worldwide study from Accenture points out that overall cus-
tomer satisfaction that had constantly improved since 2005 has gone
down slightly in the last year. They also found that expectations of
customers are continuously rising, especially in emerging markets.
I n addition customer loyalty is decreasing: customers are willing
to change providers even if they are basically satisfied. Satisfaction
will not win loyalty if customers do not find that their experience is
meaningful and relevant to their expectations. An overall estimation
of the business impact this lack of loyalty has is on average $4000
worth of business per customer. This is not particularly surpris-
ing since customers have access to data and can easily compare
offerings, switching providers has become easy, and emotional and
rational commitment to a provider is rare. (Accenture 2008)
“… [T]he results point out a prevailing lack of cus-
tomer centricity – service designed around what truly
matters most to customers – the economic impact of which
is considerable.” (Accenture 2008)
I n these changing markets improvement and innovation of
skills are of crucial importance to service providers in order to keep
customers and in order to win new ones. Accenture claims that

service design as emerging field 31

companies need to develop more sensitive antennas for tuning into
what today’s consumers expect and value, as well as learning what
it takes to reach and retain them. Obviously the traditional path of
customer insight that freezes needs and experiences in Excel sheets
is obsolete, and new ways of approaching and of gaining meaningful
insight are needed. “Using the customer experience as a springboard
to high performance, however, is far from simple.” Therefore new
concepts and methods are needed in order to succeed.

focus on service design

Service design is a new concept, introducing new processes and
methods to service providers. Service design was rather irritating
when first introduced as an academic field in design research and
education at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne at the
beginning of the 1990s. At that time there was a common mis-
understanding of design by the wider public and in many media
and industry. Design was linked to the idea of styling and product
cosmetics. Design was thought to be about making things more
beautiful and more expensive, perhaps putting them into museums.
Service design thus seemed rather odd, and at the time I understood
that a lot of basic communication about the value of design was
necessary in order to connect service design to the relevant business
needs of service providers.
At that time not only common design understanding but also
design education needed to be thereby repositioned and redefined.
Whereas in the past designers were highly specialised professionals
that contributed great value to different aspects of economic and
social challenges, the demand for new approaches and competencies
increased as the complexity of the economic and social problems

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grew. A holistic design education that placed emphasis on analytical,
conceptual and social competencies and that integrated the urgent
issues of a service economy, ecological responsibility or even gender-
related issues into education instead of teaching technical skills
alone was at the time the answer to the changes in the world.
Service design was thus established as a part of a holistic and
innovative design education, and even if it was irritating at the
beginning it now has credibility in teaching, research, and practise
all over the world. Throughout these almost fifteen years of research,
experimentation and collaboration with industries a quite amazing
body of knowledge has been developed and service design expertise
has proven its value in numerous projects in the industrial, public
and private sectors.

success stories
Virgin Atlantic, for one, has its own department for service design.
The Volkswagen research department is integrating a service design
approach into their research. McDonald’s has set up a customer
experience innovation centre using the service design approach as
a major facilitator for innovation. Numerous service companies,
including telecommunication providers, insurance companies,
banks, hospitals, transportation and hospitality industries are
integrating service design on an organisational or on a project basis.
Universities are changing. At the end of the last millennium, as
mentioned, it was the Köln I nternational School of Design that had
initiated an academic service design programme in 1992, and the
Polytecnico di Milano, Carnegie Mellon University and Linköping
University established service design as topics within an academic
field. Now we find universities all over the world focusing on Service

service design as emerging field 33

Design education. Especially in the Nordic world there is an enor-
mous amount of innovation in design education going on.
Agencies for service design have set up starting from the end
of the last decade with a major hub in London and by now spread-
ing internationally, especially in Scandinavia. Great and established
design companies like I DEO or Continuum have set up Service
Design as relevant practises that have successfully been developed
throughout the last couple of years. I nternational service design con-
ferences have attracted and inspired practitioners and researchers
not only in Europe and the United States but also in several regions
in Asia. The Service Design Network (www.service-design-network.
org) offers an impressive overview of the multiple players and activi-
ties in the Service Design field. The Network connects and informs
those that are interested to learn about the growing discipline, and
it connects those professionals that have enriched the service design
community with their expertise.

service design. some foundations.

What exactly is service design? Service design addresses the func-
tionality and form of services from the perspective of the user.
It aims to ensure that service interfaces are useful, usable,
and desirable from the client’s point of view and effective,
efficient, and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view.
Service design stands in the tradition of product and interface
design, enabling the transfer of proven analytical and creative
design methods to the world of service provision. I n particular,
there are close ties to the dimensions of interaction and experience
design that originated in interface design. Even if these fields of
study are still primarily oriented around designing human-machine

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interfaces, parallels have emerged in theoretical and methodological
development, in the search for factors to be noted and influenced
when designing an experience, even though experience cannot really
be designed, only the conditions that lead to experience.
Service design also connects to expertise that has been
developed throughout the last decades in marketing. And it goes
beyond these design- and marketing-related foundations by focusing
on service-specific challenges. It has created design-rooted processes
and methods that meet these challenges. Service designers take
a deep dive into the ecologies of services, into the world
of needs and experiences of users and providers. They
visualise, formulate, and choreograph solutions to problems
that do not necessarily exist today; they observe and interpret
requirements and behavioural patterns, and they transform them
into possible future services. I n doing so they bridge business,
technology and design perspectives.

service design. basics.

Some compact basic statements about service design shall create a
simple and understandable first framework to this innovative design
field; these basics have been around for a while and I still find them
useful as first access to this field (Mager 2006):

1. Look at your service as a product. Good design is connected

to a good strategy. This is true for services just as much as for
products. I f service design is to be used in a substantial and not in
a decorative manner it has to be connected to the business strate-
gies. I t is about fundamental questions of positioning and portfolio
management.

service design as emerging field 35

2. Focus on the customer benefit. Rethinking the organisa-
tion might be part of service design processes in order to create
structures and processes that are focused on the delivery of benefit
to a customer. I t is a radical change of perspective: moving from
frontstage to backstage is revolutionary for many service providers
even though it seems so natural.

3. Dive into the customers’ world. Often the knowledge about

the customer is very much rooted in the past and frozen in Excel
sheets and diagrams. Service design explores in depth the vivid world
of emotions and experiences, it reads in observations and probes, and
helps people to envision and describe more about their own desires.

4. See the big picture. The service experience might start long
before the customer gets in contact with the provider, and the
experience does not end with the “Goodbye”. Services are embedded
in larger systems of relationships and interactions. And they need
to take into consideration the changes users go through throughout
the duration of the relationship.

5. Design an experience. The choreography of experience or at

least of conditions that enable certain experiences is a major chal-
lenge in the service design process. Use techniques that have their
roots in performing arts; learn from experience and interaction
design in order to “design time”.

6. Create perceivable evidence. Making the invisible visible and

the not yet existing perceivable is a contribution of service design.
The invisible service needs to be transformed into perceivable
evidence along the touchpoints of the service experience.

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7. Go for a standing ovation. I n many service encounters
success depends on people. The service performance needs to be
supported by a designed setting that serves the needs of the “actors”.
This might require a fundamental reflection upon the recruiting,
development, empowerment and appraisal of people.

8. Define flexible standards. A 100% standardisation as we

often find it in production sites is not applicable to services; the
right balance of standardisation and flexibility needs to be defined,
considering the type of service that is being designed.

9. A living product. Services need to be designed for learning and

development; an open membrane towards customers, employees
and environment needs to be part of the service system.

10. Be enthusiastic. The corporate culture has a major impact

on the quality of the delivered service. An attentive observation of
existing culture and a support of cultural change is thus part of the
design process.

service design. some principles.

A service design approach is holistic. I t looks at systems and subsys-
tems of relationships and interactions. I t takes the context into con-
sideration, being aware that services are living systems. Mapping the
service ecology and creating stakeholder maps are fundamental first
steps in understanding the system that shall be designed. The work
of service design is often interdisciplinary by necessity. Depending
on the objective and the phase of a project it will be specialists from
the client side that are involved: marketing, business strategies, the

service design as emerging field 37

organisational department, human resources development or the
I T department, just to name a few. I t might be external experts that
bring their expertise and professional view into the design project.
Service design is anchored in a human-centred design
approach and often has to understand or influence the behaviour
of people. I t is often therefore psychological or anthropological
expertise that enriches projects – but it might also be branch-specific
knowledge or insight about technologies or trends that is invited.
Co-creation is part of service design work in two ways. For one
thing the client and customer will be thoroughly integrated into the
exploration and creation process. This embraces external expertise
in the design of services. And it brings expertise into the client’s
organisation and prepares clients for independent continuation
on service design thinking and acting. On the other hand
co-creation also concerns the service offering: by definition
most services are co-produced, so design integrates
customers as active parts into the service delivery process,
seeing them not as passive consumers but active partners
and “co-creators” of value.
Service designers think and work visually. Throughout all
phases of the design process the transformation of ideas into visible
or even tangible dimensions is practised. I deas win a new dimen-
sion of life as soon as they are visual. This is not only stimulating;
it also helps to move into constructive processes of modelling and
adapting. Mock-ups, prototypes, storyboards, and enact-
ments are tools and methods that are applied.
The service designer should be radical. They should challenge
the existing, should reframe the given and go beyond the imagi-
nable. They should play the disrespectful “court jester” in certain
phases of projects. Service design should make sure that in the end

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the result is not about minor decorative improvements in service
systems that “hurt” nobody but that the opportunity is taken to think
and to invent, to rethink and reinvent.
The work with the service design approach can and should be
truly inspiring. The above-mentioned principles, a holistic
view, interdisciplinarity, co-creative work, visual thinking
and a radical approach, create a special spirit that sets
energy free and gives motivation for change. And this is
absolutely necessary because often a lot of change is needed: not
change of machines, production processes or materials but change
of structures, processes, culture and people. And in order to make
this kind of change successful it needs a lot of inspiration, energy
and motivation.

service design. some perspectives.

The service design community has successfully grown throughout
the last fifteen years, it is successfully implemented in practise, and
a strong network has come into existence. I nternational and inter-
disciplinary research is being conducted, and the body of knowledge
and expertise is building up constantly. The successful application
of service design has been practised in basically all fields of service
industries: banking, insurance, hospitality, transport, telecom-
munications, retail, health and education, just to name a few. I t is
successfully applied in the field of public and social services. These
successful cases now make it much easier to communicate about
the service design approach, its relevance and impact. And even
though we look back on a fifteen-year-old success story there are still
many hurdles to take until service design is anchored in the world
of services as a known and unquestioned contribution, until it is

service design as emerging field 39

implemented in organisational structures and roles, and until exter-
nal expertise is integrated into service development and innovation
projects on a broad scale. There is need for a broader acceptance of
investments in research, development and design in service indus-
tries and a need for a broader understanding of the contributions
service design bring to this emerging field. And last but not least
there is a need for more systematic education for service design in
academic and professional contexts.
Communication through publications like this one, through
“Touchpoint”, the first international service design magazine,
through websites like the Service Design Network site, and through
conferences will help to create a broader and better understanding
and will open doors for new successful projects. A shared under-
standing of definitions, language, processes and methods, as it is
now developing in the service design community, will help to com-
municate. And of course this shared understanding needs to leave
enough freedom for the necessary national and personal differences
in profile. Shared research on some fundamental aspects of service
design will strengthen the discipline and the community. I would
like to touch upon some of the research topics that will be of priority
for the coming years.
The development of a formal language for services is one of the
exciting new fields in development and practise, because a formal
language of services may become the basis for systematically creat-
ing conditions that would support the design of service experiences.
A design language for services empowers service designers to create
interactions, spaces, and processes on the basis of a solid knowledge
of systems relationships. This connects to the design language
research that has been built with a focus on product design and
which helps to understand the semiotic power of colour, shape or

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material. What, then, are the corresponding dimensions of a service
design language? And how could categories like style or genre influ-
ence this?
The performing arts are one field being explored by current
service design research projects to tap into their potential for concept
transfer and provide inspiration for innovative forms of organisa-
tion, notation, and communication. Perceptions and procedures
derived from the performing arts have proved useful when embark-
ing on the service design process. The issues of choreography and
orchestration invite to be explored for their inspirational potential.
The metaphor of front- and backstage is already a very helpful model
for service performances, because it reveals the necessity for a com-
prehensive view of the whole system and the necessity to cast proc-
esses, locations, props, and actors from one mould. Storyboarding
provides a comprehensive system for thinking about and visualising
the procedural narrative structure from the perspective of clients.
There are certainly many more such impulses concealed within the
theatrical process, from the first ideas to the final performance, that
will be valuable and fruitful for the design of services.
Service design is in many cases dealing with human behaviour:
behaviour of employees, behaviour of customers and co-customers.
Due to co-production customer behaviour is of greatest relevance for
the success or failure of the service. So research on the way design
can influence behaviour is of major interest within the service
design field. The social and public service sector will especially need
to focus more on the opportunities of behavioural change by the use
of design and service design interventions.
A question that has been posed often throughout recent years
deals with the potential of service design in B2B relationships.
Thus far there has been no systematic research on this question,

service design as emerging field 41

even though some hypotheses and practical experience leads to the
assumption that service design is and can be successfully applied.
There is need for a deeper reflection on the restrictions and opportu-
nities in this field.
A research agenda will be shaped in more detail within the
Service Design Network and within those communities and net-
works that have now started to grow on a more regional level. The
successful development of service design on an international level
will be thus strengthened with these activities – and publications like
this volume will support this process.

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 references
Accenture (2008),
H igh Performance in the Age
of Customer Centricity. Global
Customer Satisfaction Report
M ager, B. (2006), 10 Service
Design Basics. Köln.

Design Council (2007), The

Value of Design. Factfinder Report.
Zentrum für europäische
Wirtschaftsforschung (2008),
Innovationsverhalten der
Deutschen Wirtschaft

Bain & Company (2005),

survey of 362 companies on
customer satisfaction.

Mager, B. and Gais, M.

(2009), Service Design: Design
studieren. Stuttgart: UTB.

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