Design of services in servitized firms: gamification as an adequate tool

Abstract

Purpose This paper aim to propose a model of analysis that justifies gamification as an adequate tool to improve the design of services through the human centered design (HCD) methodology. Design/methodology/approach The present study is a conceptual contribution. Based on the information provided by the academic literature on the design of services, HCD and gamification, the suitability of the proposed model is justified to help the servitized companies to improve the design of their services. Findings There is a gap in the academic literature about how a servitized company develops its service design process; consumers demand experiences through services; involving consumers in the co-creation of value and co-design of services can guide servitized companies to achieve success with servitization; gamification is an effective tool as a relational marketing strategy. Research limitations/implications The review of the literature carried out in this paper provides a solid theoretical basis for future researchers in the area of servitization, service design and relational marketing. However, given the conceptual nature of the research, it is necessary to validate empirically the proposed model. Practical implications The proposed model can be useful as a reference for manufacturing companies to guide their servitization process. The study extends the debate on how to integrate the design of services by presenting a model of development based on gamification. Originality/value Having knowledge of the end-user is essential throughout the service design process and gamification can be achieved as a HCD technique.

The road towards industry 4.0: a comparative study of the state-of-the-art in the Italian manufacturing industry

“…, 2018). Researchers and practitioners have accepted the industrial concept of Industry 4.0 as a revolutionary shift that could enable factories to achieve higher product variety with decreased downtimes, energy consumption and improved quality (García-Magro and Soriano-Pinar, 2019; Oztemel and Gursev, 2020). Based on connectivity and computing power, manufactured products could be autonomous products and integrate self-reliant or self-governing ability.…”

Human-centred design in industry 4.0: case study review and opportunities for future research

“…Product life cycles are getting shorter while production batch sizes are getting smaller with dynamic product variants associated with increasing complexity, which is challenging the traditional production systems (Benabdellah et al, 2019 ; Kuhnle et al, 2021 ; Ma et al, 2017 ; Prinz et al, 2019 ; Windt et al, 2008 ; Zhu et al, 2015 ). To manage these dynamics, the industrial concept of Industry 4.0 has come about and has been accepted in both research and industry, a trend linked to digitalization and smart systems that could enable factories to achieve higher production variety with reduced downtimes while improving yield, quality, safety, and decreasing cost and energy consumption (García-Magro & Soriano-Pinar, 2019 ; Järvenpää et al, 2019 ; Napoleone et al, 2020 ; Oztemel & Gursev, 2020 ; Park & Tran, 2014 ). Although the adoption of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing reveals positive outcomes, the increased complexity as a collateral effect has also brought many challenges (Bednar & Welch, 2020 ; Cohen et al, 2019 ; Fernandez-Carames & Fraga-Lamas, 2018 ; Mourtzis et al, 2018 ; Wittenberg, 2015 ).…”

“…Numerous contributions have been written on Industry 4.0 areas; however, the majority of them focus on the technical aspects in which human factors are commonly underestimated (Bhamare et al, 2020 ; Grandi et al, 2020 ; Pacaux-Lemoine et al, 2017 ; Peruzzini et al, 2019 ; Theuer et al, 2013 ). There is an increasing concern about how human factors are barely considered in design for products and/or services and poorly addressed in manufacturing, causing complex problems with often unknown consequences across different industrial contexts: nuclear accidents (Wu et al, 2016 ), market failures in new product development (García-Magro & Soriano-Pinar, 2019 ), robotic-surgery-related adversities (Varshney & Alemzadeh, 2017 ), technological accidents during machine manipulation (Pacaux-Lemoine et al, 2017 ), and interaction issues among humans and smart systems (Jung et al, 2017 ; Rogers et al, 2019 ; Streitz, 2019 ).…”

Improving User Experience and Communication of Digitally Enhanced Advanced Services (DEAS) Offers in Manufacturing Sector

“…The main functionality of gamification is to enhance the learning experience through interaction and engagement. Even though video game-based learning has seen success in many areas, there are only a few examples in the current literature of these learning techniques being used to convey the concept of servitization [29][30][31][32][33]. By adopting game-based learning methodologies, some of these studies demonstrated some success in bringing the benefits of servitization across to manufacturers.…”

“…Nevertheless, the methodology adopted has primarily been gamification of content rather than creating a serious game. Several studies highlighted the importance of the gamification concept and proposed possible theoretical models [29,34,35]. The transition of gamification from a theoretical to a practical level has not been explored or applied in real-life systems by the vast majority of studies.…”