Exploring the transformative impacts of service design: The role of designer–client relationships in the service development process

Based on a multiple case study on Service Design (SD) projects, we discuss different levels of SD's transformative impacts, associated with three types of designer–client relationships. In the ‘delivering’ relationship, SD informs service planning and development practices based on user-centred insights, while affecting physical service resources/technologies. In the ‘partnering’ relationship, SD aligns actors with the target users' experience while extending the SD impact, beyond physical resources/technologies, to human actors. Finally, in the ‘facilitating’ relationship, SD helps client organisations build their own capabilities for sustainable user-centred innovation, while achieving a wider impact on physical resources/technologies, human actors, processes, and routines. The contextual factors and implications of the designer–client relationships for SD practices are also discussed, based on expert interviews.