Exploring the Systemic and Speculative dimensions into Service Design

Abstract

The scale and process of Service Design are expanding and evolving as the emerging challenges they face become increasingly complex and uncertain. In order to cope with the systemic complexity and uncertainty of future changes when designing service (eco)systems, more holistic and speculative dimensions are needed to be considered. In the field of design, Systemic Design and Speculative Design are considered to have the capacities to deal with systemic complexity and critically consider future uncertainty. Therefore, this study aims to explore from the theoretical level to the operational level to understand if and how Systemic Design and Speculative Design can help to expand the Systemic and Speculative dimensions into Service Design. Through literature review and expert interviews, this paper presents the theoretical relationships between these three approaches and discusses the opportunities and criticalities of approach integration. In the end, we propose three future research directions and open up open questions about Service Design evolution in Systemic and Speculative dimensions.