Design Strategies in Different Narrative Frames

Abstract

Introduction During its evolution, design—both as a discipline and as a practice—has expanded its sphere of influence and its typical object of intervention, acknowledged until 20 years ago above all as the industrial product. In recent years, because of causes linked to the evolution of organized production systems and social and cultural consumption market dynamics, the design core moved progressively from tangible objects—where design was responsible for the technological aspects of the product to fix the use value—to intangible offerings—where the value for users became a variable of other additional factors. These intangible offerings not only included the use of the product but also aspects linked to the purchase experience, product access dynamics, product availability, and connections with other services and offerings. The productservice system became a consolidated approach in science and project practice, where integration between tangible and intangible components of the offering is becoming an important area for design.1 In designing a product-service system, design includes not only the identification and organization of each component but also the links and connections between the tangible and intangible parts that create value for users.2 The broadening of the design spectrum went beyond the systemic composite concept of offering. Accordingly, design became a thinking form—design thinking3—an approach and a series of tools serving changes in different systems, including economic, social, and environmental systems. For many decades, the discipline of design considered the user to be the primary reference of its action. A rich literature linking user-centered design and ergonomics emphasized user centrality for design action,4 until more recent theories started regarding user involvement in the various design phases.5 The basic concept of the user-centered design paradigm seems to be sound when design creates products and product-service systems for existing markets and known consumers, which take into account, a priori, defined cognitive and cultural patterns and needs, purchase models, logics, and use contexts. However, this favorable condition of 1 Stephen L. Vargo and Robert F. Lush, “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” Journal of Marketing 68 (2004): 1–17; Susan M. Goldstein, Robert Johnston, JoAnn Duffy, and Jay Rao, “The Service Concept: The Missing Link in Service Design Research?” Journal of Operations Management 20, no. 2 (2002): 121–34; Ezio Manzini and Carlo Vezzoli, “A Strategic Design Approach to Develop Sustainable Product Service Systems: Examples Taken from the ‘Environmentally Friendly Innovation’ Italian Prize,” Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (2003): 851–57; Rajkumar Roy and David Baxter, “The Product–Service System,” Journal of Engineering Design 20 (2009): 327–28; Ezio Manzini, Carlo Vezzoli, and Garrette Clark, “Product–Service Systems. Using an Existing Concept as a New Approach to Sustainability,” Journal of Design Research 1 (2001): 12-18. 2 Roy and Baxter, “The Product–Service System,” 327–28; Manzini, Vezzoli, and Clark, “Product-Service Systems;” Francesco Zurlo, Le Strategie del Design. Disegnare il Valore Oltre il Prodotto (Milano: Il Libraccio, 2012). 3 Roger Martin, The Design of Business (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2009); Tim Brown, Change by Design. How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (New York: Harper Collins, 2009). 4 Donald Norman, “Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful,” Interaction 12 (2005): 14-19; Donald Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and Shelley Evenson, “Interaction Design Research in HCI, a Research Through Design Approach,”