Designing services is different from designing products. In contrast to products being discrete and tangible objects, services are co-produced by people and only provide value when they are actually used. Digital services represent a specific category of services and specifically leverage and integrate information technology in the service delivery process.

The aim of this course is to introduce key concepts and theoretical foundations of digital service design. Furthermore, a management perspective looking at the entire service lifecycle, covering the organizational and team level as well as state-of-the-art digital service design processes (e.g. agile, lean, continuous delivery) is provided. Finally, an introduction of important digital service design practices and tools supporting user research, conceptualization & prototyping as well as evaluation is given.

The lecture is complemented with a Digital Service Design challenge, where students leverage practices and tools from the lecture to suggest improvements for an existing digital service. The challenge is carried out in cooperation with practice partners (e.g. Commerzbank).

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Williams, Kevin, Samir Chatterjee, and Matti Rossi. 2008. “Design of Emerging Digital Services: A Taxonomy.” European Journal of Information Systems 17(5): 505–17

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Werder K, Zobel B, Maedche A (2016) PDISC -- Towards a Method for Software Product DISCovery. In: Maglyas A, Lamprecht A-L (eds) Softw. Bus. 7th Int. Conf. ICSOB 2016, Ljubljana, Slov. June 13-14, 2016, Proc. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 47–62

Pichler R (2016) Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age. Pichler Consulting

Liu, X., Werder, K., & Maedche, A. (2016). A Taxonomy of Digital Service Design Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Information Systems

• Definition and key concepts of digital service design and related terms
• Introduction to the business and design perspective of a service design project
• The digital service design process from strategy through planning and prototyping to launching the digital service.
• Practice-oriented capstone project focusing on the design of a real-world digital service

The students

• get a deeper understanding of design in general and specifically understand what digital service design comprises
• can conceptualize and operationalize usability, user experience, service experience, and customer experience
• understand the underlying mechanisms for a successful interplay between individuals, teams, and the organization within the entire digital service lifecycle
• learn the most important digital service design practices & tools
• apply digital service design practices & tools in a real-world scenario