What this publication covers
Organizes the service design literature and proposes a research agenda. The diversity of approaches shows that the field cannot be contained within a single methodological tradition.
How this reference can help
Distinguish different ways of producing knowledge about services.
Curated by Ricardo Martins
View the original abstract 🇺🇸 🇬🇧
This paper presents the findings from a systemic enquiry into the current research on Service Design (SD). It examines academic publications on SD over the last two decades using a summative content analysis of 305 articles that use SD as one of its ‘author provided subjects ’. The analysis revealed: (1) three distinct groups of publications that use SD differently, with research rooted in Design (142 articles) seen as the driver for development of SD as a discipline; (2) a typological overview of SD research including nine categories differentiated by ‘knowledge’ and ‘methods’. The findings suggest that SD research is largely comprised of practice-oriented and phenomenological studies based on interpret- ative approaches. Research underpinned by The Design Journal DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2019.169480849 THE DESIGN JOURNAL VOLUME 23, ISSUE 1 PP 49 –70 REPRINTS AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHERS PHOTOCOPYING PERMITTED BY LICENSE ONLY © 2020 INFORMA UK LIMITED, TRADING AS TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP PRINTED IN THE UK objectivism is noticeably rarer. Future research needs to go beyond practice-based research, to embrace more objective and systemic approaches.