The paradox of delivering professional design services: The plurality of value

Do professional design services offer a service or design a product? A traditional definition rooted in the service economy might point to the former, but the theory of Service-Dominant Logic from marketing might suggest the latter. While this may appear purely as a semantic difference, it has severe implications on 1) how designers articulate the value of their services, and 2) how clients perceive the value of a designer’s service. This paper provides four industry examples to show how professional design services may change how they deliver a service to address the evolving expectations of a design service. It ends by offering two ways service designers can help professional design services innovate how they render services to their clients.

keywords: professional design service; service-dominant logic; architecture services

• year: December 2019 – February 2021
• for: Service Design and Innovation Conference
• download: Article
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvJxRT68Iwc