[10] Service design practice is the specification and construction of processes which deliver valuable capacities for action to a particular user.
Service design practice can be both tangible and intangible, and can involve artifacts or other elements such as communication, environment and behaviour.
[17] Early contributions to service design were made by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank and marketing manager and consultant,[18] in the form of written articles and books.
[19][20] The activity of designing a service was considered to be part of the domain of marketing and management disciplines in the early years.
[25] In 2003, Engine, initially founded in 2000 in London as an ideation company, positioned themselves as a service design consultancy.
For instance, service design must consider not only the customer experience, but also the interests of all relevant people in retailing.
[29] Other methods, such as cultural probes, have been developed in the design discipline, which aim to capture information on users in their context of use (Gaver, Dunne et al. 1999; Lindsay and Rocchi 2003).
[30] Other techniques, such as IDEF0, just in time and total quality management are used to produce functional models of the service system and to control its processes.
Recently, video sketching (Jegou 2009, Keitsch et al. 2010) and prototypes (Blomkvist 2014) have also been used to produce quick and effective tools to stimulate users' participation in the development of the service and their involvement in the value production process.
[32] Public sector service design is associated with civic technology, open government, e-government, and can constitute either government-led or citizen-led initiatives.
Due to new investments in hospitals, schools, cultural institutions and security infrastructures in the last few years, the public sector has expanded in many countries.
The number of jobs in public services has also grown; such growth can be associated with the large and rapid social change that is in itself a trigger for fresh design.
[33] In 2002, MindLab, an innovation public sector service design group was established by the Danish ministries of Business and Growth, Employment, and Children and Education.
[34][35][36] In Denmark, design within the public sector has been applied to a variety of projects including rethinking Copenhagen's waste management, improving social interactions between convicts and guards in Danish prisons, transforming services in Odense for mentally disabled adults and more.
[37][38] While this approach has been explored through an early initiative in the UK, the possibilities of service design for the public sector are also being researched, picked up, and promoted in European Union countries including Belgium.
[39] The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) were originally established under the auspices of the Cabinet Office in 2010, in order to apply nudge theory to try to improve UK government policy interventions and save money.
[41] In recent years New Zealand has seen a significant increase in the use of Service Design approaches and methods applied to challenges faced by the public sector.
Since its release the report has seen extensive use and has assisted in both the engagement of stakeholders as well as the development of public services focussed on achieving better outcomes for those experiencing urban poverty.
Real-world service design work can be experienced as new and useful approaches as well as entail some challenges in practice, as identified in field research (see e.g. Jevnaker et al., 2015).
A redesign is ideally clinically led and involves all stakeholders (e.g. primary and secondary care clinicians, senior management, patients, commissioners etc.)