A Situated and Embodied Approach to Service Design

The two basic questions that every service-designer has to consider are – what features to include in a service, and who all to engage in the implementation of these features? We demonstrate that the true semantics of the value, which a service aims to create for its adopter, resides in the social and bodily being of the adopter. Situating the adopter in her interactions with the external-world helps identify the different responsibilities that the adopter, and other entities occurring in that situation, can undertake in realizing the service. At the same time, embodying the adopter helps acknowledge the role of bodily states in mediating the effect a situation has in terms of the appreciation it invokes at the adopter. We provide a set of four force-dynamic patterns that model this mediation, thereby helping service-designers identify situations that best implement the features required to invoke the desired appreciation.