eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

Service prototyping is an emerging subject among researchers. A considerable amount of research has been carried out regarding early, low-fidelity service prototypes. Several authors have developed and tested methods to build low-fidelity service prototypes.

A common approach to building service prototypes consists of three phases: exploration, evaluation, and communication. The early stages of the design process are in focus in much of the research. Popular themes are frameworks, benefits, tools, case studies and even spaces to help new practitioners to explore new service concepts. However, there is very little literature on the latter stages of the process.

Especially new practitioners have difficulty understanding when and how to move beyond the early stages. The main reason for this difficulty is that as the service development progresses more factors need to be taken into account. The complexity of the prototypes and their testing increases in the later stages of the development process.

In this thesis the term service communication prototype (SCP) is used to describe a prototype that conveys the main points of the concept in a realistic environment to a specific audience. Yet, there is no clear common knowledge about SCP in academic publications. Case studies would give the guidelines, techniques on how to build SCPs and how to test them in physical and digital channels. The aim of this thesis is to clarify the role of SCPs by interviewing Service Design practitioners, and studying use-cases from leading industry specialists.