Nicola Morelli

Product-service systems, a perspective shift for designers: A case study: the design of a telecentre

Abstract A large perspective shift is informing corporate strategies in modern economies. Such strategies, once focused on product manufacture, are now aimed at providing product-service systems (PSS) i.e. systemic solutions including products and services. Designers, who have usually focused their activity on material products, have rarely been involved in the debate about the development of such systems. The shift to PSS therefore, represents a challenge for designers, who now need to extend their traditional logical domain and to develop new methodological tools. This paper explores such a shift, through a case study, the design of a telecentre.

Service as value co‐production: reframing the service design process

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological approach to design product service systems based on an active participation of customers to the value production process. Furthermore, the paper aims to present methods and techniques that can be used to understand local context and highly individualized needs, and to integrate local actors, including users in the value production process.Design/methodology/approach – Methods and tools presented in this paper are structured into three main categories: analytical tools, development tools and representation techniques. Such tools will be illustrated through examples from case studies.Findings – Methods and techniques presented in this paper are borrowed from other disciplines and adapted to the task of service design. The new methods relate to a new paradigmatic framework and are not easy to compare with existing methods, they are rather complementary to existing knowledge on service design.Practical implications – The new methodological app...

Active, Local, Connected: Strategic and Methodological Insights in Three Cases

The activity of design is rooted in the very first part of the history of the industrial revolution. In the past century, designers invented new products, sometimes introducing substantial social or technical innovation; in other cases, they contributed to improving the aesthetic or technical quality of existing products or materials. Their role has been essential in the definition of an industrial model based on large production volumes for broad markets, but they have also contributed to the maturation of such a model toward sophisticated production platforms and product architectures, which allow industrial production to customize solutions for smaller target groups. Design’s contribution has been to help define the social and economic role of industrial production in modern society—to the point that it has sometimes been seen as one of the key factors influencing the identity of the culture and the image of a country. When industrial production models—and the development model they supported—have been identified as one of the most critical nodes in the question of sustainability, designers have been seen as part of the problem and perceived the urgence to change their perspective, methods, and role. Because of the public perception of design action, which associates design with material and large-scale production, and because of the urgency of the question of sustainability, the choice for designers is either to embrace and cultivate new perspectives for their work or to be marginalized as secondary actors in the development of more sustainable strategies. The former implies that designers reframe their skills and competencies in view of a sustainable perspective. The second case, while not requiring significant changes in the design profession, implies that designers will not be able to seize the opportunities offered by the broad socioeconomic change suggested by the question of sustainability. The debate over sustainability within the discipline of design in the past decades can be framed within two general parameters. The first addresses the question of “what to do.” This question refers to the definition of strategies for improving the environmental efficiency of our production and consumption system. The second addresses the question of “how to do it.” This question refers to the definition of a methodological approach that supports an effective implementation of sustainable strategies. The present historical

Framing Design to support Social Innovation: The Open4Citizens Project

Abstract In the recent years, new forms of organization have emerged, that have a disruptive power over the existing social and economic system. This phenomenon is challenging the traditional design approach, based on the idea that designers could design services for citizens and public administrations. In the new processes designers and service provider are simply mediating the process of co-creation and supporting the ecosystem for the value creation process. This paper will propose a logical framework for the design action, according to a multi-level structure that includes the value-creation level, in which design is a prerogative of the stakeholders participating in the value-creation action; the level of infrastructuring in which designers use their expert knowledge to support the interaction in the value-creation phase; and the level of governance, in which designers must figure out the structure of the ecosystem in which the value-creation process can be adequately organized and possibly scaled-up.

Challenges in Designing and Scaling up Community Services

ABSTRACT This paper is based on two European Union-funded projects: Life 2.0, which was recently completed, and My Neighbourhood, which is still ongoing. The goal of the former was to create location-based and socially networked services to support elderly people in living independently. The aim of the latter is to develop a platform to activate hidden or latent resources in neighbourhoods. Both of the projects are an application of service design to the public sector and together provide useful insights about designing and scaling up highly localized and personalized services and service platforms. While several analogies can be found between the existing generation of social networking platforms and the services proposed in these projects, there are also several important differences that challenge the way local and individual services should be designed in the perspective of being scaled up to larger contexts. This paper reflects on the lesson learned from the work undertaken so far and proposes criteria and hypotheses for the diffusion of these types of services.

Future configurations for remote work

The changes generated by information and telecommunication technologies in the organization of work activities may influence the way that modern cities will change in both the short and long term. The radical changes predicted in the first utopian scenarios have not taken place yet, but there is evidence of slow changes that are reshaping work and urban structures. This article analyses this evidence, in the light of the utopian and dystopian views proposed by many authors, with the aim of outlining scenarios for the future of work activities and urban structures.

Empowering Citizens with Open Data by Urban Hackathons

Empowering citizens to make meaningful use of open data is a challenge somehow less central than others to public sector information disclosure policies. The latter are typically focused on promoting business innovations and economic activities in general (first goal) or increasing transparency in government and/or political inclusion (second goal). Based on the interim results of an ongoing EU funded project, which has run five independent Hackathons in as many European cities during the year 2016, we note that the time is ripe for establishing alternative ways of citizen integration in public service (re)design processes that may act as a sort of accelerators for some key, social and political, dynamics of change.

Design as a Problem and Design as a Solution for Sustainability

The role of industrial design has been essential for the definition of an industrial model based on large production volumes for broad markets, but industrial designers also contributed to the maturation of such a model towards sophisticated models that are now proving to be unsustainable. This made the design discipline particularly sensitive to the question of sustainability. In this context, the need for a decisive change of perspective for designers is certainly a necessity, but can also be an opportunity to propose a new approach that can generate sustainable innovation and development, especially at the local level. This paper proposes a change in the design perspective that is strongly linked to a new approach to innovation in industrial production. Only a genetic change in the role of industrial production is likely to provide the radical changes required for a sustainable development. Consequently, only a radically new design approach will be able to support such change.

Open Data: Creating Communities and Practices for a New Common

Open Data are increasingly seen as a new and very relevant resource, that can dramatically change the landscape of the services and infrastructure in urban environments. This opportunity is often conceptualized by defining open data as a new common. Open data however, are not necessarily a commons, at least in the sense defined by Bollier [1], they are rather a shareable resource, which will only be accessed and used if a community exists around them and a set of practices and rules are defined to manage them. This paper is focusing on those two aspects: the creation of a community of users and a set of practices that regulate and facilitate the use of open data. Communities and practices, the two elements that would turn open data into a common, are not emerging spontaneously; their emergence needs to be appropriately designed.

A Triplet Under Focus: Innovation, Design and the City

Three key concept domains are considered and explored in a unitary framework. They are: innovation, the only possible response to global crises, aiming at transforming behaviours and practices towards systemic changes and transition; design, a way of creatively conceiving, developing and driving forward new practices for undertaking large scale transitions; and cities, seen as the environments where problems present themselves in the most socially relevant way and at the same time as key opportunities for testing and adopting forms of innovation which target global challenges. The chapter positions the three key concepts in relation to the most relevant academic references and to the current debate on innovation processes.