Approaches to the development and design of service systems: A comparative analysis of design methods and its relation to the scope of services

Abstract

In the last three decades Western countries have experienced a shift in their economic base, traditionally manufacturing and industrial, to an information era predominantly supported by the provision of services. However, this rapid change in the market has not been accompanied by the development of methods and techniques to service design. The few existing approaches emerge primarily from the 90s and among them we highlight “New Service Development”, “Service Engineering”, and “Service Design” (Bullinger et al., 2003; Pezzotta and Cavalieri, 2012; Meiren and Ganz, 2010). This article proposes (i) to determine the content advocated by these approaches in order to contribute to the design exercise, and (ii) to evaluate the contexts for applications of these approaches due to different service types - from the traditional and standardized services to the customized ones which are intensive in contact with the user.

Keywords: service systems, service design, service engineering, new service development.