By Maurício Manhães, Gregório Varvakis, Tarcísio Vanzin

Designing Services as a KnowledgeCreation ProcessIntegrating the Double Diamond Process and theSECI Spiral

In Touchpoint Volume 1 No. 3, Tether and Stigliani raised

fundamental questions about the future of Service Design:

how to build legitimacy, how to control - or lose control

of - a profession and how to coordinate efforts between its

entrepreneurs, practitioners and academics. They focused on

knowledge. We tend to agree that "successful professions are

associated with strong bodies of knowledge". Perhaps we are

sympathetic to that argument because we are from a Knowledge

Engineering and Management post-graduate program at the

Brazilian Federal University of Santa Catarina, UFSC.

The FoundationKnowledge management andService Design have a lot to offer tothe processes of service innovation.The academic literature containscountless citations connectinginnovation and knowledge creationand innovation and designo

Some researchers affirm thatdesign is of decisive importancefor innovation: "Behind everyinnovation lies a new design", sayBaldwin and Clark (2005, p. 3).Moreover, in the economy ofknowledge, where the continuousiterations between innovation andcompetition require an unstoppableflow of new designs, knowledge

28 TOUCHPOINT I THE JOURNAl OF SERVICE DESIGN

management has the theoreticalresources needed to clarify andassist in understanding innovationas a knowledge-creating process inorganisations.

Service Design can play a centralrole in the processes of serviceinnovation and, thus, generatevalue for organisations. It is clearthat Service Design has to pres-ent itself through a narrativethat makes sense to the world ofmanagement and organisations.Likewise, presenting amethod thatcan be understood and absorbed bymanagers will facilitate adoptionof Service Design practices by its

. own practitioners and by organisa-

tions in general. This effort is inline with what Tether and Stigliani .write about the need to "substanti-ate the industry as a whole" (p. 37).

Service Design can als o be under-stood as a knowledge-creationprocesso Design and innovation areboth knowledge-creation process-es. The similarities can be clearlyseen. Then, why not create an 'in-terdisciplinary bridge' between thetwo fields and exchange conceptsand theories to the benefit ofboth?

TheMethodThe bridge is based mainly ontwo constructs: (a) the 'doublediamond' design process ofdiscover, define, develop anddeliver proposed by the DesignCouncil (UK) and (b) the espiralof knowledge', as one of theelements of the knowledge creatingprocess (Nonaka et al., 2000). Alsoknown as the SECI Model, thespiral of knowledge is a widelyaccepted knowledge managementmodel. Basically, it states that "anorganisation creates knowledgethrough the interactions betweenexplicit knowledge and tacitknowledge" (Nonaka et al., 2000).

METHOOS, STRUCTURES ANO PROCESSES

These interactions occur withinfour medes of knowledgeconversion: socialisation (tacitto tacit), externalisation (tacit toexplicit), combination (explicitto explicit), and internalisation(explicit to tacit). As can be seenin Figure 1, this sequence ofknowledge conversion forms aspiraI.

The method proposed in thisarticle is not 'new'. In fact, itresults from minor adjustmentsof practices used by many ServiceDesign agencies. In a sense, muchof the 'novelty' of this method liesbeneath its surface - in establish-ing an academic rationale for eachstep.

In brief, the proposed methodconsists of a series of divergentideageneration steps folIowed byconvergent idea selection steps(Rietzche et al., 2006). The methodalso establishes a conceptuallinkbetween the design process andthe Darwinian "blind variationand selective retention" process, assuggested by Simonton (1997).That is, an alternating series ofdivergent steps (blind variation),folIowed by convergent steps

. (selective retention). As Simonton(1997, p. 67) explained, "ln the longrun, creators must lack foresightregarding the sociocultural meritsof their ideas. If it were otherwise,we would have to consider creatorsa special class ofprophets."

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Dorst and Cross (2001) notethat the design process involves"co-evolution of problem/solutionspaces." In that process, combi-nations of problem/solution areselected and tested. This usualIy re-quires a heavy cognitive effort fromthe participants. effort can be easedthrough the use of multimodal im-agery (as in the use of role-playing,pictures, drawings and all kinds ofmaps) and the understanding of theknowledge creation process (know-ing that the creation of knowledge,i.e. innovation" may be facilitated

by a dynamic process, startingwith socialisation and continuingthrough, externalisation, combina-tion and internalisation).

As illustrated in Figure 2, theproposed method is divided intothree stages: pre-field, Field andpost-field work.

In the first stage, mapping andresearch of a particular valuenetwork occurs and a focal point isdetermined. That network, relatedto the service under investigation,

TOUCHPOINT I THE JOURNAL OF SERVICE DESIGN 29

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DESIGNING SERVICES AS A KNOWLEDGE CREATION PROCESSBy Maurício Manhães, Gregório Varvakis, Tarcísio Vanzin

defines which participants aregoing to join the process ofsocialisation at the beginning ofthe second stage. This definition ismade through the mapping of thecustomer/provider relationships.During fieldwork, multiplemultimodal records are producedabout the experiences andexpectations of participantswith regard to the service at hand.These records support theexternalisation and thecombination ofknowledge.

ln the end of the second stage, eachparticipant prepares a reflectionor self-questioning texto This stepfacilitates internalisation (whichis the last step before the spiralgoes to the next ontologicallevel).This last record, like all the others,is collected by the organisers ofthe processo A few days later, theself-questioning message is sent toeach. That ends the fieldwork stageand the internalisation mode ofknowledge conversion.

The fieldwork provides Servicedesigners with sufficient informa-tion and knowledge to start aprocess of designing a new valueproposition for the service beingstudied - the third and final stageof the method. This article focusesmainly on the fieldwork stage of theproposed method. Future researchaiming at the post-fieldwork stageis necessary and will probably reap

30 TOUCHPDINT I THE JOURNAL DF SERVICE DESIGN

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greaterbenefits for the practicesof Service Design. Even so, one ofthe most important contributionsof this work was bringing togetheran interdisciplinary theoreticalfoundation for this emerging field,answering the call from Tetherand Stigliani. We believe that onlythrough a strong body ofknowledgewill Service Design be able to standthe challenges of time.

Further details about the 'diarnond'and 'spiral' methods can be obtainedby contacting the authors. e

References:• Baldwin, C. Y.; Clark, K. B:

'Between 'Knowledge' and 'theEconomy ': Notes on the ScientificStudy of Designs', ScientificStudies of Designs. pp.1-41, 2005.

• Dorst, K., CROSS, N: 'Creativityin the Design Process: Co-evolution of Problem-eolution:'Design Studies, vol. 22, no. 5,pp. 425-437. doi: 1O.1016/S0142-694X(01)00009-6,2001.

• Nonaka, 1., Toyama, R., Konno,N: 'SECI, Ba and Leadership:a Unified Model of DynamicKnowledge Creation,' Long RangePlanning, vol. 33, no. 1,pp. 5-34.Elsevier. Retrievedfrom http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/píí!S0024630199001156,2000.

• Rietschel, E., Nijstad, B.,Stroebe,W: 'Productivity is not enough:A comparison of interactive andnominal brainstorming groupson idea generation and selection,'JournalofExperimentalSocial Psychology, vol. 42, no.2, pp. 244-251. doi: 1O.1016/j.jesp.2005.04.005,2006.

• Simonton, D. K: 'CreativeProductivity: a Predictive andExplanatory Model of CareerTrajectories and Landmarks.'Psychological Review, vol. 104,no.1,pp. 66-89. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.104.1.66,1997.

Maurício Manhães, MSE,Teacher at the Centre for Applied SocialSciences - UNIVALI

Gregório Varvakis, PhD,Professor at the KnowledgeEngineering and Managemen Post-Graduate Program - UFSC

Tarcísio Vanzin, DrProfessor at the KnowledgeEngineering and Managemen Post-Graduate Program - UFSC

TOUCHPOINT I THE JOURNAL OF SERVICE DESIGN 31