4.1.5. The role of design Consumers want experiences that are worthwhile to them, as judged by their personal value systems (Boswijk, et. al., 2007). Lisa Cox (2008) explains that the push for business strategies to seek competitive advantage through more integrated offerings has resulted in closer examination of all customer touch points and how they can be optimised. That is how design is becoming a strategic tool, because as Cox (2008) claims it is no longer limited to influencing how something looks, but expanded to address the experience people have as they live their lives. As Press & Cooper (2003) suggest design is evolving, moving from the idea of design of tangible items towards intangible. Lisa Cox (2008) remarks that employees seek emotionally meaningful interactions with organisations. [...] They have an expectation to find meaningful and interesting work. [...] To create emotional connection with them, design thinking, service design, experience design and interaction design and empathic research methods should be used to gain insight and understanding of employee’s unmet latent needs. (Cox, 2008) Design Thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity. (Brown, 2008). In contrast to the traditional analytical approach which suggests that we should move towards the more reasonable direction to solve problems, the design thinking suggest that we should generate options that will make us find a solution instead of choosing a solution so that you can generate options. (Pinheiro and Alt, 2012). The design thinking is about designing new thoughts, new solutions. Service Design addresses the functionality and form of services from the perspective of clients. Service designers visualise, formulate, and choreograph solutions to problems that do not necessarily exist today, they observe and interpret requirements and Behavioural patterns and transform them into possible future services. (Mager, 2006)
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