Touchpoint Vol 16-1 Call for Papers  — “Bridging Disciplines: Service Design and Product Management”

Service design and product management are two powerful disciplines that share a common goal: delivering value to users and organisations. Moreover, they have similar approaches, incorporating methods such as user research, iterative design and prototyping, and a strong focus on customer understanding. Yet, they often approach this goal from significantly different angles, resulting in both synergy and occasional friction. Reconciling the big-picture customer journey with the immediate need to deliver strong product features requires collaboration, mutual understanding and strategic alignment.

Whether applied to digital products, physical products, or hybrid ones (‘connected products’), product management thrives in technology-driven sectors, particularly in North America, where its emphasis on features, roadmaps, and market fit strongly influences its practices and priorities. This can be traced to its origins in Silicon Valley, where today’s product managers are tasked with identifying user needs, aligning product strategy with business objectives and bridging gaps between engineering, design and marketing.

In contrast, service design, with its emphasis on a holistic view of customer experience, has matured in Western Europe, where it enjoys greater adoption across diverse sectors such as public services, healthcare and financial services. Its holistic approach and focus on orchestrating experiences offer a powerful complement to product management’s emphasis on delivering viable, desirable products.

However, tensions inevitably arise. Even at a semantic level, challenges clearly are present when product managers define their work around ‘products’ that, in the eyes of service designers, are merely components of a broader ‘service’. In environments where product management dominates, service design may struggle to advocate for its holistic perspective. Service designers placed in product-focused teams may find it difficult to design for the full end-to-end customer experience, potentially limiting their mandate and impact.

In this issue of Touchpoint, we aim to explore how service design and product management can effectively bridge their differences and, crucially, how service design can thrive in product-led organisations. We invite contributions that reflect diverse viewpoints and ways-of-working, offering insights into fostering collaboration across these boundaries.

Among the questions we would like answered:

Collaboration and methodologies

• How can organisations with strong product management traditions incorporate service design principles, and vice versa?
• What tools, frameworks, or practices have emerged to bridge the gap between these disciplines?
• How can service designers and product managers align their methods, especially when balancing rapid product cycles with long-term service outcomes?
• How can product managers and service designers create a shared common ground that makes collaboration easier?

Organisational contexts

• What organisational models support the integration of these disciplines, particularly in globally distributed teams?
• Where should service designers be located within the structure of a product-led organisation to have the greatest mandate and impact?
• Conversely, in organisations with a service-driven mindset, and where service design is well established, what does the successful implementation of product management approaches - and product managers - look like?

Challenges and opportunities

• What barriers prevent service design and product management from working together effectively?
• How is the growth of service design in North America (and elsewhere where product management is established) reshaping the interaction between these fields?
• What role does education and professional development play in preparing practitioners to navigate the differences between service design and product management?

We encourage submissions offering global perspectives, practical insights and case studies exploring the interplay between service design and product management. Whether reflecting on challenges or showcasing successes, your contributions will help shape a richer understanding of how these disciplines can learn from and strengthen one another.

Regular sections

Besides handing in articles related to this issue’s feature, you are also invited to hand in content for the other regular sections of Touchpoint, which are not related to the theme of the issue:

• Cross-Discipline: Highlighting the connection between service design and other disciplines
• Tools and Methods: Introduction and evaluation of techniques and activities for service design projects
• Education and Research: Insights from academia and research. 

Abstract submission:

Read more and submit your abstracts via the online form until  17 December 2024 (23:59 CET).

We are looking forward to many inspiring contributions!