Picture a room. A collection of talented people. Colleagues, strangers, a cross–functional team. There’s a facilitator, but their process is a co–creative one.

Any great performance – whether theater, opera, musical, or film – relies on two key elements: strong character development and a compelling storyline.

Delivering customised service offerings becomes particularly exciting when service design is applied to existing routines of planning and developing services within companies.

The performing arts offer many concepts and techniques that can be applied to service design. In this paper, we summarise strategic insights from decades of prior research in applying the performing arts to services.

Since ancient Greece, dramatists have known that to achieve a satisfying experience, the structure of a play is just as important as the content.

This article will provide some food for thought for designing ‘pleasurable’ surprises in products, services and other systems in order to create or reinforce human relationships and to consequently generate stronger human-centred and potentially ‘surprisingly’ successful businesses.

As service designers, we know that front-line staff are key to any brand experience. They are the ones who interact with customers, respond to customer needs and ultimately deliver the service.

The delivery of a service is frequently compared to the delivery of a theatrical performance or play, and the similarities are easy to see. Both live (or die) on the strength of a connection created between performer (service provider) and audience (service users).

If we are to undertake a human-centric approach to service design, then understanding human behaviour is a key component to designing the services people use.

Robert DeNiro rode with a cab driver for months in preparation for his role in the movie Taxi Driver. This approach to acting is call ‘method acting’.

This article will focus on the challenges and rewards of using a theatrical play to communicate research findings: the risks to be managed, the logistics to be coordinated and the impact that can be made on stakeholders.

What is improvisation? And how can it enhance the service design process?

The Heineken-sponsored global design project, which went under the title of ‘Open Design Explorations Edition 1: The Club’, invited 19 emerging designers from around the world to co-create the club of tomorrow.

Imagine yourself going off on holiday and all the different things you’ll need to accomplish before enjoying that well deserved time off. Imagine all the places you’ll go and people you’ll meet during the trip.

RePlay is a framework developed by the author to observe a concept she has described as Creativity in Action.

In this article we introduce tablework, a tool originally developed by theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Tablework is a useful tool for identifying new opportunities for service design innovation.

In conceptualising services, the design team has to consider a complex set of related factors, including user experience, situation, infrastructure and person-to-person interactions.

Successful services are rarely the result of a spark of genius. Before a service reaches its final state, it undergoes various iteration cycles.

I met Adam Lawrence and Markus Hormeß of WorkPlayExperience to discuss the connection of service design and theater and to find out more about their unique approach.