In “Service Design in HCI Research:  The Extended Value Co-Creation Model” #GottemburgTeam of the Placed Project, Anya Ernest, Daisy Yoo and Eva Eriksson, discuss what it means to practice service design in an academic research setting.

“For a long time, the primary focal point of design research has been the users—of their experiences, needs, desires, and values. By contrast, designers have been relatively anonymous and unlocatable” explained Yoo in the symposium. In a moment where the design paradigm is shifted to a service-centric approach, they consider important to recognize design researchers as distinct stakeholders, who actively interact with systems and services with a goal to fulfill their own values and achieve desired outcomes. In practice, typically the role of designer is that of a design consultant working for (or rather on behalf of) the client. By contrast, in academic research settings, the role of designer is that of a design researcher working with their own research agenda.

Using placed as a leading case, they found a series of issues with a complex set of values at play, in which design researchers emerged as distinct stakeholders with specific sets of research questions, goals, and visions. This paper’s main contribution is a model that clarifies the position of design researchers within the sociocultural context in which they practice design, and visualize how their positions impact the value co-creation, and in turn, the design outcome.

This paper presentation was part of an intense symposium program whose objective was addressing a range of key themes with dedicated single-track panels, each anchored by prominent keynote speakers reflecting upon one of their influential works in light of subsequent developments and present concerns.