Postgraduate Course: Introduction to Service Management and Design (EFIE11526)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | *Programme Core Course: Service Management and Design (MSc)*
Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on the Service Management and Design (MSc) degree programme.
This core course introduces students to fundamental theories and concepts of Service Management, alongside the practical methods and approaches to Service Design. Students will have the opportunity to apply these theories and methods to real-world contexts, and develop an understanding of how these two disciplines work together. The course will provide a foundation for subsequent core and elective courses on the programme, and embed an interdisciplinary approach throughout.
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| Course description |
This core course examines the nature of contemporary services, how they are managed, and how they can be designed, improved and transformed.
The course will explore key concepts and challenges of service management, in commercial and public sectors, the relational nature of services across key stakeholders, and the fundamental roles played by service users themselves. This will be interwoven with an understanding of the practice of Service Design, and the ever-growing toolkit of service design methods, as they are applied to support the design, co-creation and use of valued human-centred services.
Teaching and learning activities will provide students with a solid grounding in core concepts and theories of Service Management including co-production, Service Logic and an introduction to 'value' and 'value creation' and service ecosystems. This will be taught alongside the origins of Service Design as a discipline, and core tenets of human-centred design, and design thinking. The course will develop an understanding of how these concepts can be studied and applied in real-world contexts. A range of core service design methods will be introduced as means to critically examine services, frame problems and identify opportunities to improve or develop new services. Students will then consider approaches to subsequently develop, deliver and manage these services, and the varied roles of service managers and designers throughout this process.
Students will work together in groups applying their knowledge of service management and design concepts and methods to specific service contexts. Alongside this group work, there will be a range of lecture content, class seminar discussions and further individual and group activities. For example, students will have opportunities to explore service scenarios in groups, considering examples where value is created or destroyed at particular points in a customer journey, enabling students to apply and integrate service management and design concepts in order to improve service delivery.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute delivers many of its courses in hybrid mode. This means that you may have some online students joining sessions for this course. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: in some cases, students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- All presentations, and whole class discussions will be recorded (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details).
You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, a physical keyboard, and internet access.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 7,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 7,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 6,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Service Design Group Slide Deck (25%)
Working in a group, students will use service design methods to undertake a discovery process in relation to a specific service context. These methods will be combined to A) describe and analyse how a specific service currently works, and then B) to identify opportunities for service improvement and/or transformation, through problem framing and ideation approaches.
Students will be asked to produce a slide deck (up to 20 slides) which documents the methods chosen and used, and illustrates key learnings about the service studied.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 2, 3
2) Service Design Individual Written Assignment (25%)
Reflecting on service context studied during group work, students will write an 800 word (max.) assignment on discuss the limitations of the service design work undertaken as a group, as well as a succinct outline of opportunities for further user research and design to develop the proposed service change or concept.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 2, 3, 4
3) Service Management Individual Written Assignment (50%)
The assessment will ask students to write a 2,000 word assignment on a selected service for analysis, applying the concepts introduced on the course. A detailed essay brief will be provided during the course.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 4 |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment(s) will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Students will receive feedback at various points during the course:
- During teaching activities as work towards assessment is developed (formative feedback).
- Through a presentation of group work (formative feedback).
- Ahead of submission of their final individual essay during the post-intensive (formative feedback).
- By written feedback on their individual reflective essay, and their group work (summative feedback). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Critically understand and be able to explain the key concepts of service management theory, and how this underpins Service Design as a discipline.
- Critically examine and apply service management theory and service design approaches within practical service contexts.
- Demonstrate an ability to apply service design methods to address service improvement and transformation in context of emerging contemporary social, economic and data-driven challenges.
- Develop an understanding of the links between service management and design, exploring the interaction of the roles of Service Managers and Designers in practice.
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Reading List
Essential Reading:
This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World: A Practitioners Handbook. Marc Stickdorn, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider, O'Reilly Media, 2016.
Stickdorn, M., & Schneider, J. (Eds.). (2012). This is service design thinking: basics-tools-cases (1st ed..). BIS Publishers.
Mapping Experiences. James Kalbach, 2012. O'Reilly Media.
Good Services. Lou Downe. BIS Publishers.
The Scottish Approach to Service Design. Scottish Government. (Digital Directorate) https://www.gov.scot/publications/the-scottish-approach-to-service-design/
Gronroos, C. (2015) Service management and marketing: managing the service profit logic / Christian Gronroos. Fourth edition. Chichester, West Sussex, Wiley.
Gronroos, C. & Voima, P. (2012) Critical service logic: making sense of value creation and co-creation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. 41 (2), 133-150. Doi:10.1007/s11747-012-0308-3.
Osborne, S.P. (2020) Public service logic creating value for public service users, citizens, and society through public service delivery / Stephen P. Osborne. Abingdon, Oxon;, Routledge.
Recommended Reading:
G. Lynn Shostack. (1984). Designing Services That Deliver. Harvard Business Review, 62(1), 133-139. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=3921582&site=ehost-live
Beyond Net Zero: A Systemic Design Approach. Design Council. 2021. https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-resources/systemic-design-framework/
Sasha Costanza-Chock. 2020. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds we Need. MIT Press.
An introduction to service design [electronic resource]: des[i]gn[i]ng the [i]nv[i]s[i]ble /. (2018). Bloomsbury Visual Arts,.
Johnston, R., Shulver, M., Slack, N. & Clark, G. (2025) Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery. Harlow, Pearson Education, Limited.
Further Reading:
Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things (Revised and expanded edition..). Basic Books.
Keating, B.W., McColl-Kennedy, J.R. and Solnet, D. (2018), 'Theorizing Beyond the Horizon: Service Research in 2050,' Journal of Service Management, 29 (5)
Vargo, S.L. and Lusch, R.F. (2016) Institutions and axioms: an extension and update of service-dominant logic, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44
Russell Belk (2020) Ethical issues in service robotics and artificial intelligence, The Service Industries Journal, DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2020.1727892 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Service Management,Service Design,Design Methods,Service Logic,Value Creation |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Chris Elsden
Tel:
Email: chris.elsden@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr David Murphy
Tel:
Email: dmurphy7@ed.ac.uk |
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