Skip to main content ITU
Logo
  • Programmes
    • BSc Programmes
    • BSc in Global Business Informatics
    • BSc in Digital Design and Interactive Technologies
    • BSc in Software Development
    • BSc in Data Science
    • Applying for a BSc programme
    • MSc Programmes
    • MSc in Digital Innovation & Management
    • MSc in Digital Design and Interactive Technologies
    • MSc in Software Design
    • MSc in Data Science
    • MSc in Computer Science
    • MSc in Games
    • Applying for an MSc programme
    • Student Life
    • Practical information for international students
    • Ask a student
    • Women in tech
    • Student organisations at ITU
    • Study start
    • Labs for students
    • Special Educational Support (SPS)
    • Study and Career Guidance
    • Exchange student
    • Become an exchange student
    • Guest Students
    • Who can be a guest student?
    • ITU Summer University
    • Open House
    • Open House - BSc programmes
    • Open House - MSc programmes
  • Professional Education
    • Master in IT Management
    • Master in IT Management
    • Admission and entry requirements
    • Contact
    • Single Subjects
    • About single subjects
    • Admission and entry requirements
    • Contact
    • Short courses | ITU Professional Courses
    • See all short courses
    • Contact
    • Contact
    • Contact us here
  • Research
    • Sections
    • Data Science
    • Data, Systems, and Robotics
    • Digital Business Innovation
    • Digitalization Democracy and Governance
    • Human-Computer Interaction and Design
    • Play Culture and AI
    • Software Engineering
    • Technologies in Practice
    • Theoretical Computer Science
    • Research Centres
    • Centre for Digital Play
    • Center for Climate IT
    • Center for Computing Education Research
    • Centre for Digital Welfare
    • Centre for Information Security and Trust
    • Research Centre for Government IT
    • Danish Institute for IT Program Management
    • Research entities
    • Research centers
    • Sections
    • Research groups
    • Labs
    • ITU Research Portal
    • Find Researcher
    • Find Research
    • Research Ethics and Integrity
    • Good Scientific Practice
    • Technical Reports
    • Technical Reports
    • PhD Programme
    • About the PhD Programme
    • PhD Courses
    • PhD Defences
    • PhD Positions
    • Types of Enrolment
    • PhD Admission Requirements
    • PhD Handbook
    • PhD Support
  • Collaboration
    • Collaboration with students
    • Project collaboration
    • Project Market
    • Student worker
    • Project postings
    • Job and Project bank
    • Employer Branding
    • IT Match Making
    • Hiring an ITU student or graduate
    • Make a post in the job bank
    • Research collaboration
    • Read more about research collaboration at ITU
    • Industrial PhD
    • Hire an Industrial PhD
    • Maritime Hub
    • Innovation and entrepreneurship
    • ITU Business Development
    • ITU NextGen
  • About ITU
    • About ITU
    • Press
    • Vacancies
    • Contact
  • DK
The biggest challenge for Service Design is the organization
ITU  /  Press  /  News from ITU  /  The biggest challenge for Service Design is the organization

The biggest challenge for Service Design is the organization

There is no doubt that service design is important and a user centered way of engaging users and customers is crucial for surviving as we move into a service-driven economy. But succeeding with service design often takes both organizational and cultural changes. This is one of the biggest challenges for service design.

Written 9 February, 2018 10:05 by Ninna Gandrup

- Most organizations think that they can do service design in small teams – then they can say that they have adopted service design. But if you do real service design it not only affects a small team of dedicated workers in one part of the organization. It affects the whole organization, says José Abdelnour Nocera.

The user journey cuts across divisions and departments, but the service designer does not always have the ability to get involved on all levels.

José Abdelnour Nocera is Associate Professor in Sociotechnical Design and visiting scholar at the IT University

Limits to Service Design
As the discipline was born as a combination of practices of different fields e.g marketing, management, user-centred design and participatory design, when working with service design you have to cover different functions of the organization, not only those that are customer-facing, to take ownership of an entire service journey. However, in most cases the service designer only has commission to influence some of these aspects - not all. This makes it challenging to work with the user journey as a whole.

About Service Design
Service design as field is concerned with planning, organizing and co-designing the material and human components of a service to provide a quality experience for the users interacting with it. Service design can be used virtually in any organization where internal or external services are a fundamental part of its operation.

- The user journey cuts across divisions and departments, but the service designer does not always have the ability to get involved on all levels. Therefore, they mostly focus on the touch points that they actually can do something about. They only have ownership on a certain section, but not over others. For instance, they might be able to design touch points in the process of selling holiday experiences in a digital portal, but they cannot influence the service experience in the facilities where those holidays take place. This often leaves them with different licenses to change things, but makes it hard to be consistent and hard to succeed, says José Abdelnour Nocera.

José Abdelnour Nocera
José Abdelnour Nocera is Associate Professor in Sociotechnical Design. Currently a visiting scholar at ITU in the Information Management Section, José comes from the University of West London where he leads the Sociotechnical Centre for Innovation and User Experience. He is the current Chair for UNESCO IFIP TC 13.8 working group in Interaction Design for International Development as well as Chair for the British Computer Society Sociotechnical Specialist Group. His interests lie in sociotechnical innovation aspects of systems design, development and use. In pursuing these interests, he has been involved as researcher and consultant in several projects in the UK and overseas in the domains of mHealth, e-learning, e-commerce, e-governance and enterprise resource planning systems. His current research looks at how IT value and innovation unfold in developing countries. Dr. Abdelnour-Nocera gained an MSc in Social Psychology from Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela, and a PhD in Computing from The Open University, UK.

Conflicting values
The natural response is that service design is multidisciplinary and that design teams incorporate different capacities with different autonomy and agency.

Some managers can see the value of service design and do provide a human-centered ethos to the services provided by the organization, but it is where the organization’s vision and business models are not strategically aligned with service design that the challenges occur.

José Abdelnour Nocera is Associate Professor in Sociotechnical Design and visiting scholar at the IT University

- Some managers can see the value of service design and do provide a human-centered ethos to the services provided by the organization, but it is where the organization’s vision and business models are not strategically aligned with service design that the challenges occur. In those situations it is important to ensure commission to design agencies or external consultants with a good outsider visibility of the service organization as a coherent, or incoherent, whole, says José Abdelnour Nocera.

Education and creating awareness of human centeredness and design thinking tools can help the organization to be service-centered rather than product-centered. But often it takes a big cultural change to succeed.

- Often there are conflicting values between middle managers. One middle manager wants to involve the client according to service design with focus on value for customers and ideal touchpoints to the user journey. But another manager might have another business goal driven by the effectiveness of shipping goods or value for money. These cultural structures and business goals could very well be in conflict with the perspective of service design and make it hard to introduce human centeredness, says José Abdelnour Nocera.

For service design to be more than just lip service stating that ‘we are inclusive’ and ‘we do service design’, you have to align with organizational strategy, structures and goals and move from a product driven strategy to a service-driven mentality.

José Abdelnour Nocera is Associate Professor in Sociotechnical Design and visiting scholar at the IT University

Align culture, values and vision to succeed in service design
Assessing the alignment of business models with service strategies and implementation is fundamental. The challenge is that you can work with service design from different perspectives and think that what you practice is servicedesign. And to work with co-design, touch-points and user centeredness you do not have to know about strategy or business goals.

- For service design to be more than just lip service stating that ‘we are inclusive’ and ‘we do service design’, you have to align with organizational strategy, structures and goals and move from a product driven strategy to a service-driven mentality. Solving a user problem with an app is not a service-driven mentality. Though an app can be a main point of leverage, service design goes beyond. It is the context of service and the designing and steering of human interactions, says José Abdelnour Nocera and continues:

- The solution to these challenges require bottom up and top down approaches to embracing a service-driven mentality and implement it. This means, on one hand, facilitating communication all the way up from service users and making them co-owners of the service journey; and on the other hand, having top managers championing and implementing service and customer centric values that middle managers and key stakeholders can share without compromising their own immediate goals on the job.

Course: Service Design

José Abdelnour Nocera teaches the course Service Design that introduces you to the theories and methods of service design. Through lectures, case studies and workshops, the course presents conceptual and operational tools for analyzing or improving existing service ecosystems as well as for developing new services. You will explore topics central to service design such as technological and business contexts of services, journey mapping, user experience assessment for services, touch-point analysis and design, front- and back-stage processing, development of service blueprints, service prototyping, service co-creation, change management and service implementation.

This course is designed for IT practitioners, interaction designers and others preparing for the role of designing and executing services or products that are part of larger systems.

Read more about the course here. Apply here.

News

ITU receives two Danish Data Science Academy Fellowships

ITU receives two Danish Data Science Academy Fellowships

26 June, 2025

Each year, the DDSA awards a total of 10 PhDs, and 6 postdocs. This year, ITU has secured two – Nils Grünefeld who will undertake a PhD in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, and Ola Rønning will begin a postdoc project in Probabilistic Programming.

ITU researcher wants to improve statistics models

ITU researcher wants to improve statistics models

26 June, 2025

Professor Andrzej Wasowski has been granted DKK 6.1 million from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The grant is given for a project that is looking into how probabilistic models can become more reliable.

ITU researcher receives grant for project on verification of reflective programs

ITU researcher receives grant for project on verification of reflective programs

24 June, 2025

Assistant Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, Eduard Kamburjan, has received a Sapere Aude grant of almost DKK 6.2 million from Independent Research Fund Denmark. The grant will fund a project that will investigate how to verify reflective programs.

Morten Hjelholt appointed head of research

Morten Hjelholt appointed head of research

20 June, 2025

Professor Morten Hjelholt has served as interim head of research since January and is highlighted for his “commitment, conviction, and a management philosophy”. Starting 1 August, he will take on the position permanently.

ITU researchers want to bring classical music to you

ITU researchers want to bring classical music to you

17 June, 2025

Is it possible to use technology to bring arts and music closer to people? This is one of the purposes of the research project XTREME, which is investigating how mixed reality can be used to bring music and art experiences to audiences that otherwise have some barriers to experience them.

Jonas Juul has been accepted into the Young Academy

Jonas Juul has been accepted into the Young Academy

10 June, 2025

The Young Academy has revealed which talented young researchers have been admitted this year. Among them is Assistant Professor Jonas Juul from the It University of Copenhagen.

Professor portrait: Thomas Binder's research connects to a changing world

Professor portrait: Thomas Binder's research connects to a changing world

2 June, 2025

On 19 June 2025 at 14:30, Professor Thomas Binder will give his inaugural lecture in Auditorium 0 at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecture is entitled: “What design can do and how it matters”.

Professor portrait: Veronika Cheplygina improves the field of machine learning through meta-research

Professor portrait: Veronika Cheplygina improves the field of machine learning through meta-research

26 May, 2025

On 10 June 2025 at 14:30, Professor Veronika Cheplygina will present her inaugural lecture in Auditorium 0 at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecture is entitled: “Not real research”.

"The aim is our trust"

"The aim is our trust"

6 May, 2025

As part of the Danish Science Festival, the IT University and the newspaper Dagbladet Information gathered a number of experts to discuss cyber warfare in Denmark and how prepared we are for it. The Minister of Resilience and Preparedness, Thorsten Schack Pedersen, also participated in the talk.

Professor portrait: Nutan Limaye is pushing the boundaries of complexity theory

Professor portrait: Nutan Limaye is pushing the boundaries of complexity theory

1 May, 2025

On 22 May 2025 at 14:30, Professor Nutan Limaye from the section Theoretical Computer Science will present her inaugural lecture in Auditorium 0 at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecture is entitled “My reflections on the last two decades and Complexity Theory”.

Professor portrait Anna Vallgårda challenges the design of care technology

Professor portrait Anna Vallgårda challenges the design of care technology

24 April, 2025

On 9 May 2025 at 14:30, Professor Anna Vallgårda will give her inaugural lecture in Auditorium 0 at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecture is entitled: ”Radical Redesign of Care Technologies”.

Is Denmark prepared for cyberwarfare?

Is Denmark prepared for cyberwarfare?

8 April, 2025

A group of researchers from the IT University of Copenhagen is investigating what Denmark can learn from Ukraine in terms of preparing for cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare does not just affect governments and companies, but also civilians, and the researchers ask what should be done if we come under attack.

Researchers aim to teach math students critical thinking with data science

Researchers aim to teach math students critical thinking with data science

31 March, 2025

In a new research project at the IT University of Copenhagen and the University of Copenhagen, a group of researchers will investigate how data science can become part of high school mathematics education to provide students with a better foundation for critical thinking and the ability to illuminate and nuance claims they encounter in their daily lives.

ITU researcher secures grant to improve safety of AI systems

ITU researcher secures grant to improve safety of AI systems

19 March, 2025

At Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, Associate Professor Alessandro Bruni from ITU is currently conducting research on the mathematical foundation for developing verifiably correct machine learning frameworks. The project is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation.

Professor portrait: Vasilis Galis found his way in research on the Athens metro

Professor portrait: Vasilis Galis found his way in research on the Athens metro

13 March, 2025

On 28 March 2025 at 14:30, Professor Vasilis Galis from the section Technologies in Practice will present his inaugural lecture in Auditorium 0 at the IT University of Copenhagen. The lecture is entitled “Research against dead time”.

ITU researcher investigates elections in Greenland

ITU researcher investigates elections in Greenland

11 March, 2025

On 11 March 2025, the election for Inatsisartut (Greenland's parliament) will take place. For several years, researchers from ITU, led by Professor Carsten Schürmann and Center for Information Security and Trust, have been investigating election and the possibility of internet elections in Greenland, and the election today is no exception.

IRFD funded ITU project to develop theoretical foundation for probabilistic session types

IRFD funded ITU project to develop theoretical foundation for probabilistic session types

6 March, 2025

The increasing technological complexity makes probabilistic understanding and management of critical computing systems a necessity. A new research project, led by Associate Professor Marco Carbone, aims to develop the foundation for probabilistic session types to that end.

Urban highways are barriers to social connections

Urban highways are barriers to social connections

5 March, 2025

Researchers from IT University of Copenhagen have proved that urban highways limit social connections in the 50 largest cities in the US. It is the first ever quantitative evaluation of the barrier effect of urban highways in reducing social connections across neighborhoods.

New research to find efficient strategies for prevention of epidemics

New research to find efficient strategies for prevention of epidemics

26 February, 2025

Assistant Professor at ITU, Jonas Juul, receives a Novo Nordisk Foundation Data Science Investigator grant of DKK 6.5 million for a project that aims to improve statistical methods for predicting outbreaks of infections.

Within Limits – an exhibition on computation and constraint

Within Limits – an exhibition on computation and constraint

24 February, 2025

On 7 March, join Artist Jacob Remin, Associate Professor James Maguire and Postdoc Frauke Mennes from the Center for Climate IT at ITU for the launch of Within Limits – an art installation that questions and reimagines the scalar logics inherent in computational worlds.

Contact us

Phone
+45 7218 5000
E-mail
itu@itu.dk

All contact information

Web Accessibility Statement

Find us

IT University of Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
How to get here

Follow us

ITU Student /
Privacy /
EAN-nr. 5798000417878/
CVR-nr. 29 05 77 53 /
P-nummer 1005162959

This page is printed from https://www.itu.dk/Nyheder

Fejl i tilmelding