eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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The general objective of this thesis is to expand knowledge regarding service design and user-inclusive design methods as well as new ways of working in general, especially in fields in which user-centred approaches have not been used in service development. I aim at encouraging organisations to reconsider their current habits and to try out new ways of working. Therefore, I investigated what representatives of Finnish organisations that are dealing with intelligent transportation (ITS) and mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) related challenges think about service design. In addition, I conducted a workshop in which some user-inclusive service design methods were tested.

Literature indicates that with the traditional innovation approaches, organisations run the risk of producing solutions that people are unwilling or unable to use, and the interviewed professionals share this concern. Furthermore, interviewees believe that user-inclusive service design methods could help in avoiding this risk and consequently lead to creating solutions that users would find meaningful and useful. Put otherwise, Finnish organisations are awakening to the fact that old solutions no longer work in tackling new problems, and they acknowledge the need for a more human-driven approach to innovation. Nevertheless, they seem to lack the knowledge and skills to employ more human-driven innovation practices.

This research has shown that organisations are cautious when it comes to trying out creative service design methods; they would like to have examples of others using these methods first before trying them out. To provide organisations with an exemplary case, a workshop testing some user-inclusive service design methods was conducted in the context of a student project that aimed at creating a new, innovative intelligent transportation solution for municipalities. As a result of the workshop it was discovered that user-inclusive service design methods can be very rewarding for service developers even at an early phase of a project and that user-inclusive service design methods would indeed be a step towards a more human-driven approach to innovation. That is to say, the methods could help organisations in developing meaningful solutions to the challenges they face.

This research has many important implications for the field of ITS, other traditionally non-human-driven fields, governmental agencies such as Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation), and the discipline of International Design Business Management (IDBM). The main implication is that user-inclusive as well as other creative ways of working are increasingly important and that the significance of multidisciplinary work increases in the future, which is why both current and future professionals should be educated more of them.