Designing for the Level of ‘Service as Interaction’

Abstract

Value is co-created in the moment in which service beneficiaries interact with a service infrastructure, with other beneficiaries, or with technological components. The observation of services at this level reveals that different capabilities are involved in the process of value creation, from the everyday problem-solving capabilities of the service beneficiaries to the expert design capabilities of those who should facilitate value co-creation.Two key terms have been used so far, which are very much related to each other and crucial for understanding the nature of the interaction that services imply:• value co-creation, which indicates the very moment in which we produce value by accessing and/or interacting with a service (e.g. sending a message on a mobile phone, travelling on a bus, interacting with service personnel); and • design, which indicates the act of planning a process of value creation.Whenever we create value, we refer to a plan, which can either be implicitwhen it refers to very well-known sequences of routinary actions, like preparing my breakfast-or it may need a structured design plan that requires certain design capabilities, like renovating the furniture in my kitchen. This means that value cocreation always implies a (implicit or explicit) design process.The sections that follow focus on the process of value co-creation, the nature of the interactions this process implies, and the contribution of design (and expert designers) to this process. What Is Design Action at This Level?In the previous chapters, services are defined as interactions between multiple actors (also including non-animated actors such as objects and technologies) with the aim of producing value. This perspective offers a new point of view to interpret most of the actions in our individual life as a process of value creation.