Experience Design Board: A tool for visualizing and designing experience-centric service delivery processes

Abstract

Experience-centric service (ExS) is a type of service through which customers experience emotionally appealing events and activities that result in distinctive memory. The literature argues that ExS design should be a research priority in this experience economy, yet little is known on how to articulate ExSs in their design. This paper proposes a tool called Experience Design Board for visualizing an ExS delivery process as a basis for its analysis and design. The tool is a matrix-shaped board where the key factors of experience creation in ExS (namely, servicescape, frontstage employees, other customers, backstage employees, and technology support systems) are represented in rows, and the customer experience phases are placed in columns. The tool is useful in analyzing and designing how the key factors of ExS create customer experience. The tool integrates several work streams within the evolving ExS literature into its structure and is generic enough to accommodate various ExSs in physical and digital experience contexts. By visualizing an ExS delivery process from beginning to end, the designer can obtain a systematic understanding of the essential attributes of ExS and can use it for an effective design. This tool would serve as a basis for service design in this experience economy.