SERTVICE-SCAPE AND WHITE SPACE:
WHITE SPACE AS A STRUCTURING PRINCIPLE IN SERVICE DESIGN

In design a lot of attention is given the material design object. In the traditional rhetoric of design where function meets form, it is often instrumental functionality and the form of the material/content that is referred to. Attention is drifting away from the intangible issues of non-use or the form of non-content.

Of course, in some design fields, such as graphic design, the material design object incorporates the white space, the space between the content. For graphics design white space has been appropriated as an important part of the design process, and can be used to as one factor to distinguish between genres of, e.g., newspapers. Implicitly graphic designers use white space to create readability, structure, as well as aesthetics to their designs.

In service design a concept similar to white space have not been acknowledged and used as an aspect of design. Service design comprises a set of methods supporting the modelling of service experiences, such as service-scape, service portraits, service interface, etc. These focus on the content of the service experience, without especially highlighting the importance of white space for designers.

In this paper we suggest that white space can be used as a structuring principle in service design. We base this suggestion on work by Buchanan and Tschumi, and exemplify the concept and how white space is conveyed with some of service designs modelling techniques, through a case of a package delivery service.

The package delivery service has undergone a change process where some parts of the delivery chain have been pushed towards self service, and simultaneously transformed into a more masscustomized genre of service. Moreover, the contact with delivery personnel has been even more limited than it is today.

The new package delivery service restructures white space of the service, and thus highlights design aspects of the service. By focusing on the white space of the service, we find new ways of designing the service experience.

We conclude that white space is a fruitful concept for service designers to use as a structuring principle in designing service experiences, and that the challenges for future research lie in finding relevant modelling and analytic techniques for designers to enable them to actively work with white space in their designs.