The Findings from the First Service Design Projects

The design focus is expanded from physical products to service systems due to the service economy. The research designing a service system becomes more important. The scope of design becomes wider, more complex and including more interactions among various stakeholders. Because of these shifts, the new research on service system design is emerging. The paper shares the evaluation results and findings of the initial service design projects at Waseda University. The service design projects are evaluated based on the service design management framework. The findings include the importance of the joint ownership of the objectives and the deep argument for innovative idea generation. In addition, the design process of service design projects (meta-design process) such as the team configuration and the theme setting is the key to increase the success of service design projects. Lastly, the prototyping of a service/social system is not enough studied and needs to be explored further.