Anchoring of Service Design Projects for Successful Implementation: How Service Design Can Learn from Change Management Siri Bjørnsund Lønvik Department of Product Design Norwegian University of Science and Technology ABSTRACT Service design is the activity of planning and designing the experience of a service and the interaction between people and products within a service. Design of services usually happens as a project activity where service designers include the service providers and stakeholders in a user-centred design process. Anchoring is the activity of grounding and aligning project aims and goals in the organisations culture, needs and aims. This article gives an overview of research of anchoring tactics within the service design field as well as relating the theme to change management theory. A new approach for anchoring is suggested and the approach is discussed in a study of a service design project for a puBlic service. The article concludes that service design projects should be treated a type of change management and suggests that service design should borrow theory from the management fields. KEYWORDS: Service Design, Anchoring, Stakeholder Involvement, Change Management, Implementation, PuBlic Services 1. INTRODUCTION due to service design’s systemic and holistic 70 % of all new initiatives fail [1]. This is perhaps approach, which might otherwise Be difficult for especially evident in innovation projects within public service organisations to achieve. Service the puBlic sector, which can go over Budget and design is an interdisciplinary approach, although scheduled time and produce average results it has a strong emphasis on user-centred design. [2][3][4][5]. In later years the puBlic sector has been looking towards the service design field for Introducing new services translates to a change solving important proBlems [6][7]. This could Be in the organisation. Projects usually fail due to 1 Anchoring of Service Design Project for Successful Implementation implementation failures and not design failures supplemented with examples from a service as one might perhaps think [1]. The difficult part design project within the puBlic sector. of organisational change is therefore not the new organisation design but managing the 2. DEFINITIONS change to that organisation; the 2.1 Service Design implementation. A suBstantial amount of Service design is a relatively new field and is still research has Been done on factors that can in constant evolvement [9]. It has estaBlished improve implementation outside of design itself as a separate design discipline, however research [8]. As service designers should focus includes elements from various other fields on maximizing success rate, it is important to ranging from phycology to management [10]. uncover what service designers might learn There are as many definitions of service design from other fields when it comes to managing as there are practitioners and the definitions are change. often broad. In this article service design is defined as “the activity of planning and This article attempts to give an overview of organizing people, infrastructure, anchoring in service design and the communication and material components of a management field. First a presentation is given service in order to improve its quality and the of central concepts related to anchoring within interaction Between service provider and service design. Next, it explains what role customers” [11]. This definition illustrates anchoring has in service design and why it is service design’s emphasis on the user, however important for the service designer to consider it is also important to ensure that the service anchoring. The third part will give a short interface is effective, efficient and distinctive introduction to change management and give from the supplier’s point of view [12]. An an overview of anchoring within this field, important characteristic of service design is including different methods and approaches. It intangible experiences that span over different will then discuss the relationship between touch points and time [13]. One way services service design and change management on the differ from products, in addition to them Being suBject of anchoring. Based on the discussion it intangible, is that they are non-existing until will propose some principles for anchoring in used by someone. This is referred to as co- service design projects. Finally, the principles creation or co-production, which means that the and learning outcomes will Be discussed in light customers are participating in creating the of a project study. service [14]. This article is a review of literature from the 2.2 Anchoring fields of service design and change Anchoring is defined as providing firm basis or management, on the topics of anchoring, foundation [15]. One approach to anchoring is implementation management and stakeholder alignment, although it is not often used in involvement. Literature used in this study is conjunction with service design. However, in the from textbooks and research articles from project management field, alignment refers to various academic journals, as well as some the activity of aligning project goals and relevant news articles. The literature review is objectives with various stakeholders, and it 2 Anchoring of Service Design Project for Successful Implementation must Be done in the initiation phase, which is the first phase of a project. In Norwegian anchoring (“forankring”) is commonly used in project and development work, and it refers to how stakeholders understand the value and importance of a process, as well as having an interest in the project being done [16]. 2.3 Stakeholders A stakeholder can be defined as someone who has the ability to affect a project in any way Figure 1: Stakeholders [17][18]. Design commonly refers to the term users, who are users of the product or service in 3. THE IMPORTANCE OF question. Users are one of the stakeholders in a ANCHORING IN SERVICE DESIGN service design project. There are primary users, 3.1 The Complexity of Services the ones the product is made for, and secondary Service design has evolved from the field of users, for example service personnel or product design, and comparing the two fields installers. Users are sometimes the customer, allows us to see why service design has to Be a but not necessarily. One may have one suBject separate approach. In essence, product paying for the product or service (“the designers design for the interaction Between customer”), and another suBject using the product and user. To design a product, the product or service. Service design often refers to designer needs to have an understanding of actors [10], which is a Broader term than user, how people will interact with the product. The and includes everyone who are involved in product is fixed and will behave in a predictable delivering or using the service, also including way Based on different inputs. Services are staff or employees from the service provider more complex and consist of different service organisation. The term stakeholder is used in encounters. A service encounter is an both management theory and service design, interaction between people or between people and includes both users, customers and actors, and products; what is referred to as service as well as decision makers and Back office staff evidence [9]. All people are different and have in the organisation that delivers the service. In individual needs. People are more complex than services there are often many stakeholders products and will not behave in a predictable involved. For puBlic services, stakeholders can way based on different input. include service recipients, delivery agencies, their partners, ministers, other politicians, civil servants and taxpayers [19]. See Figure 1 for an illustration of how these concepts relate to each other. 3 Anchoring of Service Design Project for Successful Implementation actors in the organisation are the ones delivering the service, they need to be motivated to do it the right way. The client or management are often decision makers in the project, and in some cases there may also Be other stakeholder groups that affect final decisions. Because of this, an important task of service designers is to engage multiple stakeholders group [22]. Figure 2: Touch points and service encounters, 3.2 Service designers are user-centred adapted from Polaine, Løvlie & Reason [14]. Designers aim to Be user-centred, which means that they attempt to see the product or service In the case of traditional product design, the from the point of view of the user. This is called deliveraBle of a design project is a finished empathy, which is defined as the ability to Be product, ready for implementation. Services on aware of, understand and Be sensitive to other the other hand, cannot Be designed and people’s feelings and thoughts without having delivered in the same way. Services are had the same experience [23]. Empathy with the intangible and do not exist until they are used, user is achieved through various design research since services are created in the interactions methods, for example oBservation, data between users and service providers. Designing collection and analysis, and iterative services is therefore not about producing an end prototyping. Service designers excel at achieving result, But designing “a platform for action with empathy with end users and visualising new which diverse actors will engage over time” ideas and concepts, however they are criticized [20]. Services rely on complex and relational of their poor ability to implement new solutions entities that cannot be designed or pre- [24]. determined [21]. For instance, in order to implement a new service where the front staff Service designers strive to create delight and has to act in a different manner than before desire, and focus on what is called the user towards the customers, the staff needs change experience. There is an asymmetric power their existing routines Before one can see the distribution between the user and the result.