The practices of design management in the service industry

The need for design managers to understand service characteristics as well as their business types has been unexplored in the literature of design management. The paper focuses on the identification of the design practice in the service industry. Particularly, it aims to answer the following questions: (1) what are the characteristics of service? (2) What are the roles of design manager in service industry? (3) How the issues of design activities, design philosophies, and design strategy are used as the bases of the practices of design management in the service industry? And (4) what are the future practice of design in the service industry? Based on those questions, the paper identifies the philosophy of design management and integrates it as bases to identify design practices in two types’ service companies i.e. retailing and transportation. It also highlights the characteristics of service and the existence of design manager in these industries. Finally, the paper contributes to our understanding of several agenda for further research in setting the role of design in various service types of business.