Research library

Service design
references.

Curated by Ricardo Martins

Articles, books, chapters, and tools for exploring service design from different perspectives.

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Reading paths

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Curated paths connect concepts, methods, and design decisions. Each route starts with an accessible reference and opens the way to further reading.

Ilustração: Understand service systems
Path 01 · 4 references

Understand service systems

See how people, organizations, resources, and relationships form systems that create value.

View 4 references
  1. 01
    Understanding service ecosystem dynamics: a typology🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing sistemas, ecossistemas e interdependências.
  2. 02
    Service Ecosystem Design: Propositions, Process Model, and Future Research Agenda🇺🇸 🇬🇧Examine the rules and relationships that sustain services.
  3. 03
    How to Become a Systems Thinker🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use this reference to see how patterns, relationships, and feedback help explain service problems over time.
  4. 04
    Systems Practice🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing sistemas, ecossistemas e interdependências.
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Ilustração: Learn the foundations of service design
Path 02 · 4 references

Learn the foundations of service design

Get to know the field, its object of study, and experience as a starting point for understanding services.

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  1. 01
    The Object of Service Design🇺🇸 🇬🇧Discuss what design addresses beyond products.
  2. 02
    Service Design — suplemento do The Guardian🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing os fundamentos, pressupostos e limites do design.
  3. 03
    Designing for Service: Creating an Experience Advantage🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing os fundamentos, pressupostos e limites do design.
  4. 04
    Service Design for Experience-Centric Services🇺🇸 🇬🇧Connect experience to the conditions that make it possible.
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Ilustração: Conduct research
Path 03 · 5 references

Conduct research

Frame questions, choose methods, and generate evidence to guide a project.

View 5 references
  1. 01
    How to Explain Design Research To Your Friends🇺🇸 🇬🇧Communicate research without hiding choices behind jargon.
  2. 02
    Thinking and Doing Ethnography in Service Design🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing methodological choices and research quality.
  3. 03
    Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about methodological choices and research quality into a concrete activity or decision.
  4. 04
    Sample Size in Qualitative Interview Studies🇺🇸 🇬🇧Justify a sample without relying on a universal number of interviews.
  5. 05
    101 Design Methods🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing escolhas metodológicas e qualidade da pesquisa.
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Ilustração: Use metrics in services
Path 04 · 5 references

Use metrics in services

Explore what to measure, how to interpret indicators, and where familiar metrics can fail.

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  1. 01
    Measuring Service Experience🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing métricas, avaliação e interpretação de resultados.
  2. 02
    Net Promoter 3.0🇺🇸 🇬🇧Build an initial understanding of key debates about métricas, avaliação e interpretação de resultados.
  3. 03
    The Fallacy of the Net Promoter Score: Customer Loyalty Predictive Model🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing métricas, avaliação e interpretação de resultados.
  4. 04
    Avaliação de impacto das políticas de saúde: um guia para o SUS🇧🇷 🇵🇹Use it to turn knowledge about metrics, evaluation, and interpretation of results into a concrete activity or decision.
  5. 05
    Leveraging Quantitative Analysis: Empowering Qualitative Research with Numbers🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about methodological choices and research quality into a concrete activity or decision.
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Ilustração: Explore service design tools
Path 05 · 5 references

Explore service design tools

Explore maps and blueprints that make experiences, backstage activities, and operations visible.

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  1. 01
    Journey Mapping Exercise🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about experience, service encounters, and journeys into a concrete activity or decision.
  2. 02
    Blueprinting the service company🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about service operations, processes, and blueprinting into a concrete activity or decision.
  3. 03
    Designing Multi-Interface Service Experiences: The Service Experience Blueprint🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about service operations, processes, and blueprinting into a concrete activity or decision.
  4. 04
    Service Blueprinting: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about service operations, processes, and blueprinting into a concrete activity or decision.
  5. 05
    101 Design Methods🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing escolhas metodológicas e qualidade da pesquisa.
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Ilustração: Explore service design principles
Path 06 · 4 references

Explore service design principles

Bring together inclusion, human factors, and experience-design principles to guide decisions.

View 4 references
  1. 01
    Designing for Service: Creating an Experience Advantage🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing os fundamentos, pressupostos e limites do design.
  2. 02
    Maximizing Usability: The Principles of Universal Design🇺🇸 🇬🇧Bring diversity into design reasoning from the outset.
  3. 03
    Designing for People: An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering🇺🇸 🇬🇧Build an initial understanding of key debates about pessoas, ética, equidade e inclusão.
  4. 04
    Towards Inclusive Service Design in the Digital Society: Current Practices and Future Recommendations🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing pessoas, ética, equidade e inclusão.
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Ilustração: Implement service design projects
Path 07 · 5 references

Implement service design projects

Connect ideas to organizational conditions, service development, and sustainable change.

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  1. 01
    How Service Ideas Are Implemented🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing implementation and organizational change.
  2. 02
    Views on Implementation and How They Could Be Used in Service Design🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing implementação e mudança organizacional.
  3. 03
    New Service Development🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing implementação e mudança organizacional.
  4. 04
    Service Innovation Viewed Through a Service-Dominant Logic Lens: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Analysis🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about implementation and organizational change into a concrete activity or decision.
  5. 05
    Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about systems, ecosystems, and interdependencies into a concrete activity or decision.
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Ilustração: Create new service models
Path 08 · 5 references

Create new service models

Examine how services organize value propositions, resources, exchanges, and new ways of doing business.

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  1. 01
    A Servitization Framework for Corporate Companies🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about strategy, service models, and value creation into a concrete activity or decision.
  2. 02
    Servitization: A Model for the Transformation of Products into Services through a Utility-Driven Approach🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing estratégia, modelos de serviço e criação de valor.
  3. 03
    Customers as Resource Integrators🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing estratégia, modelos de serviço e criação de valor.
  4. 04
    Business Model Canvas🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about circularity and sustainability in services into a concrete activity or decision.
  5. 05
    Service Ecosystem Design: Propositions, Process Model, and Future Research Agenda🇺🇸 🇬🇧Examine the rules and relationships that sustain services.
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Ilustração: Use artificial intelligence
Path 09 · 5 references

Use artificial intelligence

Consider AI literacy, collaboration, journey applications, inclusion, and the risks of AI in services.

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  1. 01
    What is AI Literacy? Competencies and Design Considerations🇺🇸 🇬🇧Turn familiarity with tools into an understanding of their limits.
  2. 02
    Teaming with AI🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing the role of AI and technology in services.
  3. 03
    AI concierge in the customer journey: what is it and how can it add value to the customer?🇺🇸 🇬🇧Assess AI as part of a service.
  4. 04
    AI’s Potential to Improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A conversation with Lindsay Brine🇺🇸 🇬🇧Build an initial understanding of debates about people, ethics, equity, and inclusion.
  5. 05
    Threats by artificial intelligence to human health and human existence🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing the role of AI and technology in services.
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Ilustração: Prototype services
Path 10 · 5 references

Prototype services

Make a proposition tangible enough to experiment with, and learn through role-play, simulations, and testing.

View 5 references
  1. 01
    Prototyping: A Guide for Entrepreneurs🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about service ideation, experimentation, and prototyping into a concrete activity or decision.
  2. 02
    Props as Service Prototyping Tools: An Interpersonal Service Application🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about service ideation, experimentation, and prototyping into a concrete activity or decision.
  3. 03
    Simulations in Service Design Prototyping: Drone Deliveries with Society-in-the-Loop🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to turn knowledge about service ideation, experimentation, and prototyping into a concrete activity or decision.
  4. 04
    18 Experiments to Test a New Product Idea🇺🇸 🇬🇧Select low-cost experiments before investing in the full development of a product or service.
  5. 05
    The Failures of Prototyping: A Call for a New Definition🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use it to question established assumptions about ideação, experimentação e prototipação de serviços.
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Ilustração: Generate ideas for services
Path 11 · 4 references

Generate ideas for services

Expand possibilities, facilitate idea generation, and move from quantity to deliberate selection.

View 4 references
  1. 01
    Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing service ideation, experimentation, and prototyping.
  2. 02
    Beyond Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing service ideation, experimentation, and prototyping.
  3. 03
    101 Design Methods🇺🇸 🇬🇧Use as a theoretical foundation for discussing escolhas metodológicas e qualidade da pesquisa.
  4. 04
    18 Experiments to Test a New Product Idea🇺🇸 🇬🇧Select low-cost experiments before investing in the full development of a product or service.
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