Paper NO.118: Facilitating service interactions with design games

Paper NO.118

Facilitating service interactions with design games
Zagros Hatami and Tuuli Mattelmäki

Abstract
It is argued that design for service aims at creating an “action platform” for service interactions to occur. Service research in the field of marketing, especially the perspective offered by Service Logic, highlights the importance of service interactions in facilitation of value creation processes of customers. Recent perspectives in the field of design, similarly, recognize the importance of user contributions during the use of an offering arguing for the completion of design by the user in-use. Therefore, this paper recognizes two modes of design in-use: co-design in-use and independent design in-use. Focusing on co-design in-use, this paper recognizes service interactions as a platform for co-design in-use. Further, it examines the facilitation of such interactions with design games through the presentation of two case examples focused on coaching service offerings. Co-design in-use differs from co-design events before use as it involves the actual users of an offering in absense of professional designers.