The Barriers and Enablers of Co-design for Services

Antti Pirinen

As interest towards co-design for services in the public sector and in companies is growing, the benefits and challenges of applying it in organisations have become a topical issue. This article opens up factors that influence the success of co-design activities in the development of services among cross-disciplinary networks. It presents the findings from follow-up interviews assessing the impacts of six service co-design projects realised by a university with partners from healthcare, education and technology. The focus is on the barriers and enablers of co-design that the participants had encountered. The central findings are that a university-led service co-design project remains a superimposed activity with low impact on actual design decisions or core activities in the client organisations and that the utilisation of co-design greatly relies on individual, committed participants. Based on the empirical material, 20 barrier-enabler couples related to collaboration, the organisation, processes, implementation and methods are identified and described, the consideration of which can lead to more impactful service co-design practice.