Linköping University

Linköping University is renowned for its innovative educational spirit and its longstanding tradition of cross-disciplinary studies and research. At the centre of the work of the Interaction and Service Design Research group are human concerns, sketching and expression of ideas, innovation and methodological work.

A non-traditional cooperation across subject and faculty borders defines the interdisciplinary approach that is the hallmark of Linköping University (LiU). An entrepreneurial spirit of education characterizes the university’s history.

The university has developed several unique educational programmes that transcend traditional academic borders. This approach was manifested in the creation of Sweden’s first MSc programme in Industrial Management and Engineering. Many similar ventures have followed, with programmes such as: Master in Design, Cognitive Science, Information Technology.
The university offers postgraduate studies and research in more than 100 scientific areas within 17 multidisciplinary departments. These departments, which combine the expertise of several academic disciplines, were pioneers in the Swedish academic world when single-subject departments were the rule. The university employs over 300 professors, and has more than 25000 students

Interaction and Service Design Research Group

The IxS research group studies the applied art of facilitating people's interaction as it is mediated by IT-based products, services, and systems.
At the centre of our work, as in all design work, are human concerns, sketching and expression of ideas, innovation and methodological work. Design is a work process for developing solutions in a reflective and innovative manner, meeting both functional and aesthetic requirements based on the needs of people.

Linköping university pioneered the interaction design research and education in Sweden during the 90’s, and are currently pioneering the service design research and education. In 1995 we started the first studio based interaction design course, and in 2005 we started the first service design course.

At Linköping university IxS is responsible for courses at all levels in interaction and service design for a range of educational programs, as well as being the main actor behind a master’s program in design, where services are on of the context within which students learn to work with design.

Projects

• SERV: Service design, innovation and involvement

The project Service Design: Innovation and Involvement, SERV, will develop and judge a set of design techniques that supports human-centered service development. OECD claims that 70 % of a typical western economy’s growth is driven be services and service development. Other actors claim that design is an important aspect for sustainable growth and development. SERV will develop

* design techniques for service design
* modelling techniques for individualisation
* techniques for user involvement in service innovation

This is made possible through a consortia that opens up a set of service development projects for these research purposes. The service development processes will be configured in such a way that, e.g., the design techniques can be developed and judged. The service development projects will focus on individualization of IT-services, and thus on configuration of multiple mediators. The consortium provide existing enabling technologies, emerging technology development, service development settings, enabling individualization of these services and creating generic solutions, tools and methods.

http://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/research/SERV/

• LUDINNO: Learning Lab for User-driven innovation

The Ludinno project is a Nordic project aiming to establish learning labs in several of the Nordic countries with the objective to create a playful environment for organizations to experiment with user-driven innovation methods together with experienced researchers and students. In Linköping the focus will be on using Design methods in Service environments to promote and allow for user-driven innovation.

http://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/research/LUDINNO/

• MAVB: Acquiring IT-systems for service delivery

Design of IT-systems has mainly been a concern for the software developing organization. In this project we focus on the role of design methods in early stages of acquisition of IT for technology based or supported services.

http://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/research/MAVB/

• ICE: Service innovation for health and care

The project Service innovation for health and caret, ICE, focus on early stages of service innovation through design methods, advanced methods for user involvement and cooperation in trading zones of innovation.

The point of departure for the project ICE is the expansive home-care service context home-care. Today, there is national as well as international growth within this context and the possibilities for successful service innovations are excellent. ICE will work on some of the challenges for the service context.

To enable innovation with a high degree of involvement of the many actors that are part of this context, ICE will develop forms for and try so called trading zones, in cooperation with the regional growth initiative New Tools for Health. Within these trading zones, ICE will utilise, develop and test user intensive design methods with high degree of empathy. This implies that the methods involve users who try out service innovations before these are in an actual phase of development. This approach creates high quality descriptions of service innovations. Reliable methods are introduced and new methods are developed taking service design as a starting point, for example, empathy tools, personas, experience prototyping, crowdsourcing, scenarios, design probes. Other relevant methods build on an ethnographic and situated approach.

The project’s research consists mainly of design research, focusing two aspects of service innovation: design methods in the front end of innovation, and strategies for user involvement and mechanisms for exclusion. The former highlights which methods that are suitable for early phases, how they work and the type of Swedish vocabulary that is appropriate for service design. The latter illustrates the mechanisms for exclusion that different involvement strategies bring about.

www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/research/ICE/

Publications

Holmlid, (2007). Interaction design and service design: Expanding a comparison of design disciplines. Nordes 2007.

Holmlid, S., & Evenson, S. (2007). Prototyping and enacting services: Lessons learned from human-centered methods. QUIS 10. Orlando, Florida.

Holmlid, S., & Hertz, A. (2007). Service-scape and white space: White space as structuring principle in service design. European Academy of Design conference, Dancing with disorder: Design, discourse & disaster, Turkey.

Arvola, M., & Artman, H. (forthcoming). Enactments in Interaction Design: How Designers Make Sketches Behave. Accepted for publication in Artifact - Journal of virtual design.

Arvola, M., & Artman, H. (2006). Interaction Walkthroughs and Improvised Role Play. In Proceedings of DeSForM 2006, Design & Semantics of Form and Movement. Eindhoven, The Netherlands, October 26-27, 2006.

Holmlid, S. (2006). Introducing white space in service design: This space intentionally left blank. Emergence conference. Emergence 06 - Service design, Carnegie Mellon.

Holmlid, S., & Evenson, S. (2006). Bringing design to services. Invited to IBM Service Sciences, Management and Engineering Summit: Education for the 21st century. New York, October.

Holmlid, S., Lantz, A. (2006). Developing e-services in a government authority: Different views on design in procurement and system development. NordiCHI workshop on User involvement and representation in e-Government projects. Oslo, October.

Holmlid, S. (2005). Service Design methods and UCD practice. In Proceedings from User Involvement in e-Government development projects, workshop at IFIP conference Interact, Rome.