Human issues in service design

A heightened awareness of the fundamental behavioral science principles underlying human interactions can be translated directly into service design. Service encounter design can be approached with the same depth and rigor found in goods production. Service encounters can be designed to enhance the customer's experience during the process and their recollection of the process after it is completed. This paper summarizes the key concepts from a panel discussion at the DSI National Meeting in Orlando in November 2000. The panel brought together a number of leading academic researchers to investigate current research questions relating to the human side of the design, development and deployment of new service technologies. Human issues from the customer and service provider vantage are illustrated and challenges to researchers for exploring this perspective are presented.