This list represents a summary of the past forty years of service design literature. The citations were compiled from the Emergence conference at Carnegie Mellon University as well as the Designing for Services project in the UK, service design syllabi at CMU and independent research. I've included the abstracts and introductions to the papers and cross-referenced examples and concepts so that it's easy to follow the development of ideas such as "service blueprinting" across multiple papers.

Select any underlined term to filter the list, showing only papers that share that particular concept, example, author, journal or decade. If you'd like to help fill in the gaps by suggesting other canonical papers, e-mail the citations to service at howardesign.com. Thanks!

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Designing product/service systems: A methodological exploration
Design Issues, 2002
Nicola Morelli
From the article: "In the design discipline the methodological implications of product/service systems rarely have been discussed even though design components play a critical role in the development of PSS. This paper explores the disciplinary domains that may offer methodological suggestions for the design of PSS. The first part of the paper focuses on the design of PSS from a designer's perspective, emphasizing the role of designers in developing innovative PSS. The second part outlines methodological tools that can be used when dealing with specific aspects of the design activity focused on PSS."
Compare with:
How to Design a Service
Service Blueprinting: A Practical Tool for Service Innovation
Blueprinting the Service Company: Managing the Service Processes Efficiently