Service design and design thinking has become an trendy approach in developing information products and services. Many cultural institutions including libraries and museums has adopted such an approach to devise new products and services to address users’ unmet needs.

In collaboration with Thailand Creative & Design Center (TCDC), Songphan Choemprayong, an assistant professor at the Department of Library Science, and two undergraduate students documented TCDC’s service design experience during the relocation in 2016-2017.  The article entitled “Service design for the design community: TCDC Resource Center’s relocation experience” is published in Art Libraries Journal (Vol. 43 No. 4) which can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2018.28.

Below is the abstract of the article.

During the move to a new location in 2016-2017, the headquarters of Thailand Creative & Design Center (TCDC) in Bangkok applied a service design approach to devise and deploy new and improved services. Applying a case study approach, this article reports the TCDC experience in adopting a service design approach in its library function at the TCDC Resource Center. The initiative aimed to create a new service blueprint as well as to implement new and updated services to meet ever-changing user needs. It is expected that service design will increase the user satisfaction level, which will lead to an increasing number of members and visitors, as well as promote revisits and brand loyalty. The process included developing empathy, service ideation, prototyping, and testing. As a result, several new and updated services were introduced and implemented both in the physical space and online. As an iterative process, the design team has also provided multiple channels to receive feedback from users both directly and indirectly to ensure continuous improvement of its services and products.

Service Design Experience at TCDC