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- Chowdhury, Soumitra, 1983-
(author)
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Service Logic in Digitalized Product Platforms : A Study of Digital Service Innovation in the Vehicle Industry
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The digitalization of products has become an important driver for service innovation in manufacturing firms. The embedding of digital technology in previously non-digital products creates digitalized product platforms that enable digital service innovation. Digital service innovation offers new business opportunities for manufacturing industries, as well as challenges established premises for value creation. While digital service innovation can be found in many manufacturing industries, this thesis studies service logic in digitalized product platforms in the vehicle industry.Existing Information Systems (IS) literature presents challenges in digital service innovation relating to value, architecture, and generativity. The design of the architecture of digitalized product platforms requires the identification and combination of digital and non-digital assets. Understanding the architectural aspects is useful in digital service innovation. Moreover, with growing instances of generative digital technologies, it is challenging to develop strategies to leverage generativity for service design in digitalized product platforms. While digital technologies are embedded in products, the role of technology-embeddedness in value creation of digital services is relatively unexplored. Drawing on these challenges, this thesis describes and conceptualizes the underlying premises brought by the architecture and generativity to the value creation of services in digitalized product platforms. The research question addressed in this thesis is: What are the underlying premises for services in digitalized product platforms?To address the question, an interpretive qualitative research approach was adopted in a collaborative research project concerning services enabled by digitalization of vehicles. Drawing on digital innovation and service literature, this thesis presents a theoretical perspective on the role of the architecture and generativity of digitalized product platforms for value creation of digital services. This perspective is conceptualized as underlying premises for this specific class of services. The premises frame the service logic in digitalized product platforms and provide a ground for understanding services in digitalized product platforms in relation to value dimensions, architecture and generativity. The premises are based on five concepts: value-in-architecture, value-in-connectivity, fundamental asset for value creation, mutual dependence of modular and layered modular assets, and re-evaluation of value propositions. The proposed premises offer a basis for understanding value creation of this class of services, and guidance for manufacturing firms designing digitalized product platforms.
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| 2. |
- Lindberg, Susanne, 1987-
(author)
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Ethics of User Involvement in Sensitive Design Situations
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- While this era of digital technology brings great possibilities for improving the lives of many people with digital healthcare services, the design of these services in turn present challenges that are ethical in nature. Participatory Design (PD) values user involvement in design from a democratic, empowerment and ethical perspective. However, the design of digital healthcare services constitutes sensitive design situations, that is, situations that have the potential to negatively impact the participants. As a consequence, participation in these design situations involves risks, causing ethical dilemmas. The ethical dilemmas that designers face in sensitive design situations are situated, dynamic, diverse, unpredictable, and occur in-action. Yet, it is a complex field with little in situ support for designers who intend to involve users in sensitive design situations, and high complexity and risk increase the need to understand ethics in these situations. Consequently, this thesis intends to answer the question: How can users be involved in sensitive design situations?The research question has emerged from the study of two design projects and is addressed through a Design Research (DR) approach. Both projects aimed at designing Digital Peer Support (DPS); one designs DPS for children between 8-12 cured from cancer, and the other designs DPS for people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The DR approach enables the study of de facto design situations in the two design projects. The thesis consists of a collection of five papers and a cover paper.The results show that, in sensitive design situations it can be challenging to uphold the fundamental ethical commitments of PD: that participation is a democratic right, the user is the expert, design should enhance, and design is situated. Based on the empirical study, I propose four principles for ethics in sensitive design situations that aim to support the upholding of these ethical commitments: (I) the principle of enhancement; (II) the principle of acknowledgement; (III) the principle of advocacy; and (IV) the principle of accommodation.The research contributes to the discourse on ethics in PD by expanding the understanding of ethical values of user involvement. Ethical guidelines must be dynamic and responsive, and participation should be carried out using methods for continuous critical reflection. The research contributes to practice by providing practical guidance for those who intend to involve users in sensitive design situations, ethical review boards who review PD, and for training of future PD researchers.
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