Aalborg University - School of Architecture and Design

DESIGN AND INNOVATION Research Unit on Service Design (ReUSeD) The research Unit on Service Design and Innovation includes researchers of the Department of Architecture and Design at Aalborg University. The unit works on methodologies on service design and on strategic design issues related to design driven innovation in public and business services.

Research topics and capabilities Research areas include:

• Methodological approach to service design, including:analytical tools for design, including ethnographic and user centred analysis,
• design tools, including scenario building and system platforms and representation methods, including use cases, video sketching and any other communication tools related to service design
• Design of public services, including:Healthcare services and service for ageing people, Mobility services, Service related to food production, distribution and consumption, Services for public administrations and citizens-focused service, Private intervention in social services
• Design of business services, including: Redesign of production and consumption systems related to industrial products, User-driven innovation in the redesign of business services, Design of new services on the basis of emerging users’ needs

Strategic design and design driven innovation issues concern the application of design methodological approaches to the development of innovation in services or through services in the public and private sectors. The research Unit is a node of a network of Danish and international researchers working on different aspects of service design and innovation. Core group

• Nicola Morelli (service design methodologies, Design of public services)
• Christian Tollestrup (Service design methodology, Vision and Mission based methods)
• Marianne Stokholm (Strategic Design)
• Louise Møller Nielsen (Design-driven innovation)
• Søren Bolvig Hansen (User centred design, design anthropology)
• Max Munneke (Design of everyday practices)
• Ole B. Jensen (mobility analysis, design and services)
• Henrik Harder (GPS and tracking system for urban development)

People and contacts from other departments

• Smart Health. An interdisciplinary Research group on social and human aspects of healthcare.
• CHAT Centre for Human Appliance Technology, Aalborg University
• V-Centah, Virtual Center for Technology for the Elderly and Handicapped

External Contacts

• AHO, Oslo
• Lindkoping; Sweden

SVID Swedish Industrial Design Foundation, Sweden

• Uiah, Finland
• Laurea, Filand
• D’Art, Finland
• Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Lancaster University, UK

Relevant projects:

• Methodologies for service design (with AHO), reference: Christian Tollestrup

LUDINNO, methodologies for user driven innovation (With SVID, AHO, Lindköping, UIAH), Reference Nicola Morelli

• I.De.A Innovation og Design til Ældre Nicola Morelli
• I.De.Ho – Innovation and Design for Hospitals – Nicola Morelli
• Sundheds Området som accelerator for Erhvervsudvikling (Health sector as an accelerator of business development), Nicola Morelli

The Service Design Wiki The service design Wiki is an open platform for the exchange of knowledge about service design practice and information about events, projects, cases and research project. The Wiki was created in 2007 and includes pages on:

• methodologies (including service blueprinting, use cases, representation techniques)
• service design exeplary cases in public and private services
• students’ projects (at the moment only the projects of Aalborg University students are included, but the wiki is open to further contributions)
• links to relevant service design consultancies
• research projects
• events conferences and seminars, including links to videos available from those events
• publication on service design

to Service Design Wiki Publications

• Mass Customisation and Highly Individualised Solutions. Stretching Mass Customisation Beyond the Traditional Paradigm of Industrial Production. Morelli, Nicola; Nielsen, Louise Møller. I: MCPC07 : The 2007 World Conference on Mass Customisation and Personalization (MCP). Cambridge Boston and Montreal.
• Synopsis: Service design suggests a way to look at scenarios for highly customised solutions, that go beyond the existing capabilities of mass customisation. This is possible by revising the role of service providers, producers and users in the value production system.

• New Representation Techniques for Designing in a Systemic Perspective. Morelli, Nicola; Tollestrup, Christian. I: Design Inquiries, Nordes 07 Conference. 2007.
• Synopsis: Designers are familiar with representation techniques for product design, but service design requires that new techniques are included in the designer’s toolbox, that allow for a better representation of some critical factor in service design, such as time and interaction

• Social Innovation and New Industrial Contexts: Can Designers "Industrialize" Socially Responsible Solutions? Morelli, Nicola. I: Design Issues. 2007.
• Synopsis: This paper consider service design as an innovative approach to address some crucial issues on design for social responsibility. Because of its participative approach, service design could represent a fruitful good opportunity to define activation strategies, which activate people in need as co-producers of highly individualised and localised solutions to their own problems. When appropriately planned, socially responsible solution should also be based on economy of scope, that make it possible to transfer tacit, individual and localised knowledge across different local contexts.
• download PDF belwo

• Vision-based methodology for collaborative management of qualitative criteria in design. Christian Tollestrup. I: IEA 2006 Congress : Meeting Diversity in Ergonomics.

• The System Around the Product, Shifting the Focus from Material to Immaterial Aspects in Design Solutions. Morelli, Nicola. I: Drawing New Territories Swiss Design Network.
• Synopsis: This paper describes a curricular activity focused on the definition of methodologies for designing in a systemic context. using examples from students’ projects. For a semester students had to focus on a project of a PSS, borrowing and re-adapting methods from other disciplines with the purpose of developing their own project. By freely choosing and adapting such methods students defined their own operative paradigm for designing in a systemic context

• Developing new Product Service Systems (PSS) : Methodologies and Operational Tools. Morelli, Nicola. I: Journal of Cleaner Production. 2006.
• Synopsis: The co-evolution of industrial production and social patterns calls for systemic solutions that can only be provided by partnerships between companies and other stakeholders, including final users. Such partnerships are defined as Solution Oriented Partnerships (or SOP). Product Service Systems (PSS) are the catalyser of such solutions. The capability of PSS to become an attractive solution depends on factors that are commonly considered to belong to the design domain. The role of designers is therefore essential to the definition of effective and attractive PSS. Designers are now urged to find their own methodological approach to the design of PSS. This paper addresses this need by proposing methods to define a map of the actors involved in PSS, methods to define requirements and structure of a PSS and methods to represent and blueprint a PSS.

• Globalised Markets and Localised Needs. Relocating Design Competence in a New Industrial Context. Morelli, Nicola. I: E&PDE 06. : Educating Designers for a global context. Institution of Engineering Designers.
• Synopsis: The term globalisation describes an ongoing change in many different contexts. This paper analyses the contribution of a service design approach in addressing three different perspectives related to globalization:A perspective focusing on market-related aspects; a perspective focusing on global environmental and social sustainability and a perspective focusing on socio-economic changes caused by globalisation

• Managing Globalisation and Local issues in Service Design. Morelli, Nicola; Sangiorgi, Daniela. I: D2B The 1st International Design Management Symposium. Shanghai 2006.
• Synopsis: This paper illustrates two cases of service design companies working across different local context, dealing with process of knowledge transfer and adaptation to specific cultural, economic and organisational conditions

• Design in new industrial contexts : shifting design paradigms and methodologies. Morelli, Nicola. I: EAD06 : 6th European Academy of Design Conference. Bremen, Germany, 2005.
• Synopsis: The output of industrial process is becoming more and more complex as a result of saturation of markets and the fine segmentation of the demand. This context is addressing industrial production towards new models, characterised by highly personalised and localised solutions. Despite their small scale, such individualised and localised solutions should be expressed according to an industrial logic. The cooperation, within the production system of companies, local actors and even users may address this problem, however the industrialisation of such solutions is a methodological approach that has not yet generated an appropriate operative paradigm to address concrete design solutions. This paper focuses on the development of such and operative paradigm, which should include methods and tools to develop innovative product service systems (PSS) for the new industrial context.

• New design competences for localized production systems : a case study in Denmark. Eriksen, Kaare Riise; Morelli, Nicola. I: In the Making Conference Papers. 2005.

• Moving from Servile Actors to… . Hansen, Søren Bolvig. I: IN THE MAKING, Nordes: In the Making. 2005.

• The introduction of Service Design within Industrial Design Curricula: the comparison of three design approaches and educational experiences. Maffei, Stefano; Morelli, Nicola; Pacenti, Elena; Sangiorgi, Daniela. I: DETM: Design Education. Tradition and Modernity, India: 2005.
• Synopsis: This paper describes and reflects upon an emerging phenomena, which is the introduction of service design courses in traditional industrial design schools. Through the description of three examples of educational experiences, the authors stressed the existence of complementary approaches to service design that could be integrated for the development of a common methodology and educational platform.

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