Service design and service evaluation: Challenges and future directions

Abstract

In response to challenging contemporary transformations that inevitably affect both the public and the business sectors, service design is increasingly acquiring a dominant role. Nonetheless, the debate about how to measure its actual contribution in triggering changes, and innovation to the largest extent, is still on the cutting-edge. What we argue in this chapter is that including the evaluation of services and service solutions into the service design practice, as extensively discussed in this book, can contribute to determine the value of service design itself as an effective and profitable approach that generates a positive impact within organizations. This enables an interpretation of the possible levels of adoption of evaluation in service design, from situations where it is not included at all, up to become a strategy fully embedded into the service design process. To support such levels of integration new competencies are required for service design professionals, to set up the evaluation strategy and to eventually conduct the evaluation research when professional evaluators cannot be included in the project. To conclude, some open issues are explored concerning how these issues can influence the evolution of the discipline and future challenges posed to service designers.