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Service design is a field emerging from the new-found interest in services as a design material by practitioners and academics of the human-centred design tradition. As such, the field can build on the knowledge from previous work in design as well as in service research. Introducing a new design material may however also introduce new challenges to practice. The research presented in this thesis investigates how the design research phase of the human-centred design process is affected by making services a design material.How users, staff and other stakeholders are involved in service design projects was studied in four studies. Two studies focused on getting a holistic view of how service designers engage stakeholders in their design research. The methods used for these two studies were interviews in one case and participatory observation in the other. The two remaining studies focused on specific aspects of the stakeholder engagement process. One compared how designers and anthropologists approach ethnography, whereas the second investigated the communicative qualities of service design visualisations.It is argued that service design is a stakeholder-centred design discipline. The tools used in service design are to a large extent borrowed from other qualitative research traditions, but design-specific tools do exist. By analysing and synthesising the information obtained, it is then Abstract ii transformed into insights. These insights are visualised to provide easily accessible representations of service situations.The final section of the thesis identifies challenges ahead for service design practice, based on the findings of the thesis and based on existing theoretical frameworks for the discipline.iii Acknowledgments Although writing up the PhD thesis might be the effort of one person, the reason that person even gets as far as starting to write up is thanks to all the people supporting that PhD student. I am grateful for everyone who has been there to support my journey towards the finished thesis. I'm indebted to and grateful for the following persons… … my main supervisor Stefan Holmlid, for all the support and letting me find my own path whilst at the same time showing me which alternate paths I might be missing. Never forcing, always suggesting suits me perfectly! … my two co-supervisors Arne Jönsson and Björn Alm. Both of you have provided invaluable outsiders perspectives on my research when most needed. Björn, a special thank you for all the fruitful discussions in general and on the methodological approach in general. And to Arne, thank you for your experience and making sure the research continued to progress towards a finished thesis.… everyone who has participated in my studies. I am extremely grateful for all your help. In total roughly 50 people have been involved in one way or another in providing the data used in the studies. This thesis would not have been possible to write without your help. An extra warm thank you to everyone in the three agencies I worked in/with for the final ...

In a research project aimed at suggesting improvements at an annual advent fair three different ethnographic research approaches were used; Social Anthropology, Interaction Design and Mobile Ethnography. The paper focuses on how the three different approaches on ethnography affected choices in the research process, the outcomes of the research and how the outcomes were presented. It is found that the different motivations for doing ethnography between the three approaches make their outcomes differ in a clear way. These differences make the three ethnographic approaches suitable for achieving different research outcomes.

Design ethnography is the appropriation of ethnography for the purposes of informing design. This paper investigates the effects of these appropriations, through a comparative study of how designers and anthropologists approach the same field site and by a review of new techniques introduced by designers to do ethnography. The techniques reviewed all apply artefacts to mediate the ethnographic process. Conducting ethnography through artefacts can be done in a number of ways and three ways are discussed here, including techniques which remove the researcher from the context of study. The implications for design ethnography of the comparative study and the introductions of artefacts to facilitate ethnographic work are discussed. The implications focus on potential methodological pitfalls of the 'designification' of ethnography as design ethnography matures.

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