Service design has been hailed for its ability to drive innovation and transformation. As a result, there are growing investments in service design by organizations, governments, and communities around the globe. However, the popular narrative of successfully crafting new service offerings through service design is not fully reflective of the situated struggles actors face in practice. In response, this study builds an alternative understanding of service design, called “service ecosystem design”, which offers a more systemic and contextual perspective of the service design process. In this view, social structures – the shared and entrenched rules, norms, roles, and beliefs of actors – are seen as the central materials of service design. This research offers a process model for how actors can intentionally shape social structures to create lasting change within service systems. In addition, it offers design principles and experimental approaches for bringing this process to life.
