Substituting Information for Interaction

The service design literature contrasts information-intensive and experience-intensive domains and applications and makes proposals for different design methods that are most appropriate for each (e.g.,). This distinction seems sensible and useful when we contrast financial accounting with visits to Disneyland, but it begs some crucial design decisions for services nearer the middle of what is probably better viewed as a continuous design space. So instead of design principles or methods that assume a clear distinction, we propose to frame design decisions in ways that highlight the range of choices on the continuum between information-intensive and experience-intensive variations of a service system. We propose "substituting information for interaction" as this unifying concept in service system design. Interesting design choices arise in contexts where information accumulates through customer interactions and value can be created if the service provider can capture, analyze, and retrieve information about those interactions and the explicit or implied preferences in them. Here the degree to which the service provider can substitute information for interaction depends on the richness of the provider's customer model to predict his next interaction or information need.