Service designers on including stakeholders in service prototyping

Services are by nature co-created. They are produced and consumed simultaneously through interactions between customers and service providers. The professional design of services is also highly associated with co-creation, which is evident in the sparse service design literature. This paper reveals what designers say they do to involve different stakeholders in the process of prototyping services. The main data source is interviews with designers from design agencies that work exclusively or partially with service design. The paper focuses on the questions of “who is involved in creating prototypes”, “who evaluates the prototype” and how “the clients [of the design agencies] are involved”. A distinction is made between different types of involvement based on previous literature that characterise different roles and perspectives on inclusion in design. Results show that most of the agencies involve others besides the design team in the creation and evaluation of prototypes. The primary stakeholder in co-creation is the client. End customers are involved also but for the most part, both clients and customers have the role of subjects or informants rather than partners in the creation of prototypes. The evaluation of prototypes follows the same pattern, and a key aspect to some of the agencies is that the client is involved, as a domain expert. The question of who authors prototypes, and implications thereof, is raised and further discussed.