What is it about?
This research reports on a real-world comparison of design concepts generated by co-design teams with those generated by an in-house professional team and a team solely made up of users in the course of a library service ideation contest.
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Why is it important?
Many service firms often limit customer involvement to the exploration stage of the design process during which they invite customers to reflect on their past experiences by means of conventional market research techniques such as interviews or focus groups. In contrast, a codesign approach allows selected customers to become members of the service design team, and together with professionals not only reflect on their past experiences but also explore latent user needs and generate design concepts for the future. Yet, research that investigates the effects of involving customers though codesign is lacking. As a consequence, firms do not have a clear understanding of the value of co-design and how the collaboration between in-house professionals and customers in design teams should be managed to leverage full benefits for service design.
Perspectives
We put co-design to the test and investigated whether the close collaboration between in-house professionals and lead users can leverage key innovation outcomes. We found that co-design teams generate concepts that score significantly higher in user benefit and novelty but lower in feasibility. However, we also found that these outcomes were only possible in cohesive teams that develop design concepts collaboratively. In contrast, in teams where individuals dominated, conflict, less collaboration, and diminished innovation outcomes were the case. Our findings provide a better understanding of the value of co-design and shed light on the complex relationship between design team composition, intrateam factors, and innovation outcomes. Our findings have practical significance because they give guidance as to how codesign should be managed to reach full potential.
Jakob Trischler
Karlstads Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Value of Codesign, Journal of Service Research, July 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1094670517714060.
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