Promoting organizational change through new meanings: Designing the rhetoric and the aesthetics of service offerings

Abstract

Design for services can be defined as the act of conceiving, planning, and building an interactive system or service architecture, the goal of which is to provide resources to support interactions between users and suppliers. This paper seeks to discuss the contribution of design to promote organizational change in public services through new meaning for services. Throughout the designing process, designers translate their interpretation of the meanings existing in a socio-cultural context and translate them into the language of designed elements that will give shape to the service offering. The authors propose that the aesthetics of services is a specific contribution that design can make to the service sector to help promote organizational change through new meanings. A case study was conducted to discuss this proposition. We present the design approach taken by a service design consultancy for the NHS Institute in order to change the organization of services provided to Multiple Sclerosis Patients in London Ealing PCT.

Keywords: design for services, service aesthetics, healthcare services.