Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
academic interest in service ecosystems, the deriving question for tourism is how to manage such
a complex system, how to understand it and how to improve or even create service ecosystems.
The iterative service design process with its distinctive methods and tools provides a practical
approach to analyze, visualize and innovate service ecosystems.
The iterative design process
The process of designing services is similar to any design process, e.g. the design process of a car.
The design process of a physical product such as a car might start with market research to
discover what kind of car potential customers would prefer. Only if there is a market for a
product, is it worth proceeding. Based on these explorations, designers start sketching fi rst ideas
and constantly iterate these according to the defi ned requirements and user or representative
feedback. Then, a fundamental idea takes form through virtual 3D or even tangible clay models.
Technical components are integrated and various aspects of the concept need to be re-modelled
and improved according to feedback from different stakeholders. Prototypes are built and tested
in terms of functionality, usability, production feasibility, cost and pricing, market response and so
on. Only if these tests remain positive will the new car be produced and brought to market. Any
mistakes during such a process may result in enormous costs and may damage the company's
image. As this simple example of a design process illustrates, a well-thought-out approach to the
design of a new product is crucial for its subsequent success. The same applies for services,
although the methods and tools need to refl ect the mostly intangible nature of services. Also
services need to be tested and prototyped with the intention not to avoid failures, but to identify
them as early in the design process as possible following the maxim: fail early, fail cheap, fail safe.
It is important to understand that the structure of any design process is iterative. This means
that at every stage of a service design process, it might be necessary to take a step back or even
start again from scratch. The single but very important difference is in ensuring that a design
process learns from the failure of a previous iteration. A mistake would only be to repeat the same
failure twice. Thus, the proposed process should be understood as a rough framework and not as
a prescriptive, linear how-to guide. In fact, the very fi rst step of a service design process is to
design the process itself, since the process ultimately depends on the context of the service
being designed and thus varies from project to project. The iterative four steps of exploration,
creation, refl ection and implementation are a very basic approach to structure such a complex
design process. Literature and practice refer to various other frameworks made up of three
to seven or even more steps, but all of them share the iterative practice. Stickdorn and
Schneider (2010: 126) mention various examples for service design processes in practice, e.g.
'identify-build-measure' (Engine 2009), 'insight-idea-prototyping-delivery' (live|work 2009)
or 'discovering-concepting-designing-building-implementing' (DesignThinkers 2009). The
design process should also refl ect recurrent leaps between designing in detail and designing
holistically, e.g. whilst working on the details of a touchpoint, its position within the whole
customer journey should be considered or when working on redesigning employee interactions,
the organizational structure as a whole should be considered. This always leads to dilemmas and
paradoxes, since decisions have to be made according to budget, resources and client requests
(Stickdorn and Schneider 2010)
The fi ve principles of service design thinking
Service design as it is understood today refers to an inter-disciplinary approach that people from
diverse disciplines can agree on to co-design services within the ecosystems in which they are
