Service Design and Change of Systems: Human-Centered Approaches to Implementing and Spreading Service Design

Michael Lin, Bobby Hughes, Mary Katica, Christi Zuber, Paul Plsek

This paper provides an ‘on-the-ground’ design case study dealing with the important issue of how to implement and spread service design concepts in large, complex organizations. When implementing a service design concept called Nurse Knowledge Exchange (NKE and NKEplus) with the frontline staff at our hospitals, our design team explored the value of converging basic change management theories with our existing design practice. Using change management theories to guide us as a design team during the implementation process resulted in a redesign of our implementation methods and inspired a more human-centered approach to spreading our service design concept with the people delivering the service. This paper outlines the implementation challenges we encountered, details how change management principles shifted our methods in implementing our service design, and reports on the value and shortcomings of our approach for the design community to consider in the future.