Transcending human-centered design by service sciences

Abstract

Human-Centered Design (HCD), which emphasizes the user's point of view, has brought many good results to date. For instance, with detailed analysis of user's context of use, developers of products and services can make them easier to use. Despite such good results, some limitations of HCD have also been pointed out. For example, since most methods of HCD are qualitative, they require exhaustive work every time with small improvements in efficiency. Although many qualitative quick methods have been proposed and tried to solve the problem, their results have not brought big differences. On the other hand, in the area of Service Sciences (SS), quantitative methods that explicate details of human activities based on a large number of data have brought some good results in producing new added-values and higher efficiency. Methods in SS emphasize the users' point of view as with those in HCD, and have come to be associated with innovation theories. Considering these current situations, this research emphasizes the users' viewpoint and combines HCD, SS, and innovation theories to come up with new methods that lead to new added-values and higher efficiency. As an initial effort of the research, this paper first clarifies relations between HCD, SS, and innovation theories, and then discusses issues in transcending HCD. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.