Designing for transformative collaboration in complex service systems

Abstract

This chapter highlights the modern need for transformative collaboration to tackle complex service system problems, and explores how service design can purposefully embed transformative collaboration in these service systems. Globalization and the evolution of technology have led to service systems that are increasingly interconnected and complex. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for collaboration to deal with the challenges of creating sustainable and resilient service systems amid this increasing complexity, and the need to design service systems to foster transformative collaboration, so that all participants can contribute at their full human potential. Building on a human-centered, participatory, and transformative approach, this chapter explores how service design can be a cornerstone of the creation of transformative collaboration service systems. A human-centered, participatory service design approach can embed transformative collaboration in both the process of cocreating new service systems and in the future service systems being designed so that all actors are enabled to contribute to the new service systems. An action-oriented, transformative service design approach can also leverage these service systems as platforms for ongoing and lasting change toward transformative collaboration. Three cases illustrate how service design can purposefully embed transformative collaboration in large, complex service systems in government, industrial, and transnational collaborative contexts. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) case shows how service design promoted transformative collaboration along the EHR design process and enabled the design of the EHR to foster collaboration among healthcare actors. The IKEA case illustrates how this multinational company, known for good design for the many (“Democratic Design”), has used service platforms to facilitate collaborative service design. The ServCollab case illustrates how this worldwide effort focuses on enabling collaborative solutions to profound human service system problems by training others in participatory design for large-scale service research projects, fostering best practices for designing collaborative teams, and serving as a clearinghouse for collaborative service research resources.