DESIGNING DIGITAL SERVICES - 2025/6

Module Overview

This module aims to provide you with a number of service design techniques and models by which current and cutting-edge digital technologies can be designed into existing and new service journeys, therefore delivering service innovation through design and technology to create business value. You will be exposed to research-informed, practice-relevant teaching and a series of innovative design workshops using emerging service science and service logic thinking to help develop innovative digital solutions or improve current ones to address current managerial and sustainability issues.

Module provider

Surrey Hospitality & Tourism Management

Module Leader

PEREIRA DOEL Pablo (Hosp & Tour)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• 
  Systems thinking, design thinking, and service design
  


• 
  The importance of service design in the experience economy
  


• 
  Understanding the business for service design
  


• 
  User experience (UX)
  


• 
  Interaction Design (IxD)
  


• 
  Personas
  


• 
  Journey Maps
  


• 
  Service blueprint
  


• 
  Ideation methods
  


• 
  Servicescape
  


• 
  Service prototyping
  


• 
  Design for sustainability
  

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

Design a digital solution or improve a current one (Individual)

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to enable you to demonstrate your ability to develop/apply an innovative digital solution to a service journey within service organisations. You will be required to show that you have both the relevant design tools and appropriate methodologies to manage this process and create innovative solutions or improve current ones optimising the learnings from this module.

In addition, the assessment strategy will enable you to prove that you are building up your knowledge and understanding of service design and the opportunities technology provides to innovate service journeys. 

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• Group presentation 

You will be required to form a group to undertake digital primary research with a small group of service users for a selected service organisation to understand their current frustrations/friction points/perceived limitations of the existing service experienced/provided. With the results, you will apply a contemporary service design model/technique of your choice, to develop/apply an innovative digital solution -or improve a current one- to an entire customer journey for the same service organisation, able to create new business value for all stakeholders, including society and environment. You will need to present the findings verbally, critically analysing the output and identifying the limitations of your work.

• Individual learning e-portfolio 

You will be required to critically reflect on and evaluate your own learning, which should include your in-class activities and service design workshops. You will be required to produce a one-page mind map of your own learning and expand this to illustrate how it will be applied in the workplace in your future careers.

Formative assessment

You will be required to contribute to the activities and service design workshops to demonstrate the development of your knowledge and mastery of academic research as well as demonstrate awareness of current industry trends. Feedback will be provided as outlined below.

Feedback

• During the first activity, the assignments and the feedback process are explained


• Feedback is also provided during and after the in-class activities and service design workshops


• As the activities are built around topic-specific exercises in a group setting, students not only benefit from lecturer feedback but also receive peer evaluations;


• The pre-assignment service design workshops are aimed to equip you with the tools and techniques required for your summative assessment and are an integral part of this module. During these sessions, you will work in groups on a task which reflects the requirements of the assignments and receive feedback on your work


• Once marking is completed, you are provided with feedback, which contains detailed generic feedback as well as a breakdown of marks. This enables you to assess your own performance compared to your peers

Module aims

• This module aims to provide you with a systematic understanding of the service design techniques that can facilitate the purposeful imagining of new, and improvement of existing, service journeys. Through specialised software, the module will focus on understanding the necessary considerations as to how innovative technologies can best be designed into these journeys to provide new value for a balanced range of stakeholders. You will be prepared to lead in the digital age.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to provide you with a battery of techniques and models to facilitate service design in innovative and digitally focused service organisations. The module will provide you with a combination of the necessary conceptual knowledge, an awareness of the contemporary challenges and considerations to be made, and practical skills to design, lead and manage digital service design in future roles.

The learning and teaching methods include:

• theoretical lectures with supporting materials from a range of perspectives within service design, design thinking, innovation, and digital transformation to provide you with a holistic framework of knowledge


• service design workshops, exercises, practical examples, and topical case studies to critically discuss and apply theoretical knowledge to contemporary industry practices


• a project in which students develop an innovative digital solution -or improve a current one- to an entire customer journey for a service organisation


• supporting guest service design workshops by practitioners


• a field trip to experience innovative and digitally-focused servicescape design


• formative feedback sessions

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MANM515

Other information

This module will run in a compressed format in the Summer as an optional module for those students taking a non-dissertation pathway.

The School of Hospitality and Tourism Management is committed to developing postgraduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. By taking this programme students will develop strong knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

• Employability: The assessments in this module require students to extract business insights from existing/potential service users and to develop an innovative digital solution to an entire customer journey for a service organisation that creates new business value for all stakeholders. These analytical and design skills will prepare students to be successful managers in the digital age.  
• Digital Capabilities: This module focuses on developing students’ capabilities in service design techniques and models by which current and cutting-edge digital technologies can be designed into existing and new service journeys, therefore delivering service innovation through technology to create business value. Students will learn how to use Smaply, a service design software, to design and map service journeys. Also, students will use the virtual learning environment (VLE), SurreyLearn, video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. These include accessing teaching and learning materials and engaging with their instructors and peers in a number of formats (i.e., online, face to face). Students will be encouraged to use the discussion boards for communication. The module assessments require students to work collaboratively. 
• Global and Cultural Capabilities: Students will learn how to interpret results of service success in diverse businesses and accounting for sectoral, national, and regional differences to consider how to improve/redesign service journeys.   
• Sustainability: Students will learn how to reflect on how to interpret service intelligence to support/improve sustainability in the service sector. 
• Resourcefulness and Resilience: Students will be required to use a range of sources to identify relevant organisations and their service results, conduct independent research, network with relevant service users, and work to develop innovative digital solutions. Finding these solutions through unstructured problems is the key learning aspect of this module that will develop students’ resourcefulness and resilience.  

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.