Design games as a tool, a mindset and a structure Kirsikka Vaajakallio

the UK, and there are more market-oriented service design consultancies
around Europe (e.g. Live|work in London). Their common denominator is
integration of design with other disciplines in search of innovative solutions.
As an example of the widening scope of design, design research projects
at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture have
expanded the role of design to address, among other things, organizational
practices and social change in the context of wellbeing and working population
growing older (Mattelmäki et al. 2007), creative tourism (Miettinen
2007) and social innovations (Bello 2008). One of the areas gaining increasing
attention is service design, which emphasizes user experience as
a driving force in service development previously characterized mainly by
business and technology driven approaches.
The need for stronger user orientation in designing services has been noticed
within economical studies on services, among others. For instance, one
limitation of the traditional management thinking, pointed out by Möller et
al. (2008, p 31–48), is that it does not consider the value of services from the
clients’ or users’ perspective. According to them (ibid.), the most successful
service providers are not those who focus on their own capabilities or their
clients’ current needs, but those who incorporate clients’ and users’ experiences
and capabilities into the service co-creation process. They do not define
in which terms they use the expression of co-creation, but service design
literature typically refers to it in two ways (Mager 2009, p 38): either it is
understood as design collaboration during the development process having
similar meaning with co-design in this dissertation, or as users’ active role in
constructing the experience at the time of consuming a service.
Service design is often contrasted with other disciplines like management,
marketing or product design; a few (e.g. Holmlid 2007) though emphasize
service design as part of related disciplines. According to Holmlid
(ibid.), service design and participatory design share central areas, for
instance, that of utilising participative techniques. According to Mattelmäki
and Sleeswijk Visser (2011, p 6), this confuses the use of co-x terms
even further: “Methods that were developed for co-designing with potential
users or other stakeholders are now utilised in service design to create potential
service solutions with clients, the solutions which are then to be cocreated
with customers and producers.”
Apparently the comparisons that underline service design as distinct
from other design disciplines try to highlight special challenges faced when
designing services. However, the critics of those comparisons point out that
the attributes used “do not capture the process and interactive nature of the
services” (Edvardsson et al. 2005, p 115). In that quotation, Edvardsson and
his colleagues (ibid.) refer to intangibility, heterogeneity (or variability),
inseparability, and perishability (IHIP), attributes which are often seen as
unique characteristics of services, and thus influencing radically how to design
them (see e.g. Maffei et al. 2005; Edvardsson et al. 2005).
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