A reflection on and suggestion of service design processes: From activity-centered descriptions toward outcome-oriented demonstrations

Background Along with increasing discussions of Service Design (SD), designers' perspective, approach, activities, and methods for service innovation have been explored as a design-led contribution to service innovation. SD processes have also been developed, strongly informed by general design processes. However, there is a lack of investigations taking a critical view on these SD processes in light of their relation to organizational innovation practices. Methods A literature study on SD and service innovation processes was conducted to confront SD activities from the design perspective with organizational innovation activities from the business perspective. This enabled the SD processes and activities to be contextualized within the organizational innovation process, suggesting potential limitations of SD processes. Moreover, the opinions of 7 SD experts in UK SD agencies were integrated with the theoretical insight. Results As a way to guide the development of future SD process frameworks, three agendas, an action plan, and an analytical framework have been suggested. Through the construction of these conceptual tools, this study argues for a shift of an approach to innovating SD processes from the activity-centered description of a design perspective, approach, and activities toward the outcome-oriented demonstration of them in the context of organizations. Conclusions This study forms a basis for the development of SD processes that better reflect the organizational process and practices. Although SD has been growing as an arena for design research and practice, its activities and approaches can have a significant and transformational value only when they are linked to organizational innovation practice.