The object of service design

Abstract

This book chapter, in a book about service design research co-edited by Daniela Sangiorgi and Alison Prendiville, explores the object of service design and the implications that emerge from different ways of thinking about the topic. Kimbell and Blomberg combine literatures from the social sciences, management and design to identify three different approaches to understanding the object of service design: the service encounter, the value co-creating system and the socio-material configuration. The discussion is brought to life by one particularly successful contemporary service business, Airbnb. The authors then turn to assessing the implications of these different approaches, by discussing cosmologies, accountabilities, temporalities, politics and expertise. Although the resulting triad is a simplification, the chapter offers a provisional answer to the question of what is the object of service design.