KB Glossary

Definition: The value exchange model describes how the enterprise’s promise is delivered by its front-line agents. It is through these agents that the customer experiences the service. If the experience matches the promise, then value is returned from the customer to the service provider. The model also suggests that the agents should be considered ‘users’ of the service, and that the use of ICTs should ensure that feedback is continuously gathered and fed back into the service design. The model can be broken into three sentences: 1.

Definition: Use this design method to define and communicate the characteristics of a user, or groups of users. Having user profiles available during the design process will help stimulate ideas and aid decision making. How Based on actual research of your user groups (see 1:1 Interviews, Market Information and User Observation), develop different character profiles to represent your users. Give the users names and visually represent how they look and dress, their aspirations, behaviour, lifestyle and any challenging peculiarities.

Definition: Use this method to understand the reality of what people do rather than what they say they do, and to gain insights to inform the design process. How: Determine the activities and the people to be observed in context, and identify an appropriate ‘expert’ observer. Depending on the information required observations might range from general (eg how people move around a shopping centre) to specific experiments to test a design (such as observing how people complete a specified task on a computer in a simulated environment).

Definition: Service touch-points are the tangibles that make up the total experience of using a service. Touch-points can take many forms, from advertising to personal cards, web- mobile phone- and PC interfaces, bills, retail shops, call centres and customer representatives. In service design, all touch-points needs to be considered in totality and crafted in order to create a clear, consistent and unified customer experience. In service quality measurement system SERVQUAL, “tangibles” are one of the five core dimentions of capturing service quality.

Definition: Situation creation is a phrase coined in the 1980s to look at how physical design details affect the customer experience. Source: Livework Studio Ltd References: Gregory Upah and James Fulton. 1985. Situation Creation in Service Marketing. In The Service Encounter, edited by John Czepiel, Michael Soloman and Carol Supremant. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 255-263.

Definition: SERVQUAL is a method for measuring service quality. The method was created during the 1980’s as part of research projects within the field of marketing. The model is based on the premise that the best way to measure service quality is to base it on the customer’s experience of quality. In SERVQUAL, quality is defined by the gap between what a customer expects and what the customer perceives. SERVQUAL breaks service quality down to five basic dimensions; reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness, often referred to as RATER.

Definition: Term coined by MJ Bitner to refer to “the role of physical surroundings in consumption settings” and how physical environments relate to activity. Bitner identifies three kinds of tangible service evidence: people, process, and physical cues. Source: Livework Studio Ltd References: Mary Jo Bitner, 1992, Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees, Journal of Marketing 56(2) 57-71.

Definition: A service ecology is a system of actors and the relationships between them that form a service. The service ecology takes a systemic view of the service and the context it will operate in. Service ecologies include all actors affected by a service, not only those directly involved in production or use. By analysing service ecologies, it is possible to reveal opportunities for new actors to join the ecology and new relationships between them.

Definition: A service blueprint describes a service in enough detail to implement and maintain it carefully. According to the British Standard for Service Design (BS 7000 -3, BS 7000 -10, BS EN ISO 9000), blueprinting is described as Mapping out of a service journey identifying the processes that constitute the service, isolating possible fail points and establishing the time frame for the journey.

Sensualisation extends the concept of visualisation to all other senses (hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, moving, etc.). The sense of sight is the strongest sense for most human beings. Hearing is the next most significant channel of information for humans. For Service Design the extended concept of Sensualisation is important for explaining and sharing concepts and to prototype Service Experiences. Source: Livework Studio Ltd