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The paper presents the experience collected in a case study in the construction equipment concerning the use of physical prototypes for the development of product-service systems (PSS) enabled by new digital technologies. The paper firstly presents how a scaled physical prototype has been deployed to foster value co-creation with customers about the crossdisciplinary opportunity of the transition toward autonomous and electrical construction sites. Secondly, the paper presents the lessons learned during the empirical study.

Heavy equipment manufacturers recognise an opportunity to realise customer value gains through offering new Product-Service Systems. Such transition implies a radical shift in how new systems are designed. Based on a set of interviews the paper investigates how radical PSS innovation can be enabled by the use of physical prototypes as boundary object to navigate early PSS design ambiguity. On such basis, suggestions for augmenting existing support tools are made in relation to the existing literature.

Product Service System (PSS) solutions have proven to be a valuable innovation approach for industry organizations to differentiate themselves in a competitive market. Modern interpretations of PSS design have urged a move towards developing transformative innovations which are more than the sum of their parts. Achieving this transition in PSS design requires new tools to support designers in broader exploration of the design space to find a potentially transformative solution concept. These solutions will involve looking three to four product generations in the future adding ambiguity to the inherent complexity of PSS solutions. To embody and gather insight on these complex concepts, this paper explores the impact of a tangible low fidelity scenario prototype activity in the early fuzzy front end of the PSS design process.