Manufacturing companies that venture into servitisation can experience difficulties when upscaling product-service systems (PSS) for further growth. This research study has two main objectives: first, to develop insight into the internal levers to increase firms’ servitisation capacity, and second, to apply a new methodology to support companies in upscaling PSS. For these purposes, we conduct an exploratory research study of eight manufacturing companies, consisting of both multiple-case and participatory action research methods. We find that manufacturers often experience challenges when either designing or rolling out PSS, which varies based on the company’s chosen strategy. Additionally, they can be confronted with an organisational logic that hinders PSS upscaling efforts. This research offers guidance to practitioners facing internal barriers for servitisation, providing a new method to explore, prioritise and work out concrete PSS-enhancing projects.

The evolution towards sustainable product service systems introduces a new relationship between product and user in PSS, where we see that the user no longer is the legal owner of the product. This article reports upon an exploration of the psychological relationship between consumer and product within the context of PSS, and addresses the way a shift in ownership influences consumers’ perception. A literature review was needed towards the psychological side of the consumer-product relationship and its relation to different research fields (product attachment, experience design and non-ownership modes of consumption). The result is a set of characteristics that describes the system and the ownership dimensions. This set of characteristics could lead to future research into the correlation of different characteristics, ultimately leading to a set of guidelines for designers designing new PSSs

User expectations regarding new products and services are evolving rapidly, forcing innovative organizations to explore new avenues for innovation, combining products and services. This paper focuses on the integrative design of product–service systems (PSSs) and builds on the servitization and service-based innovation literature. Many tools have been proposed for designing integrated PSS, with the intent to generate economic and/or sustainable impact. In this article, we focus on tools being used for bringing the user experience and intangibles in the design process. Although the literature is rich with tools and methods to optimize the PSS design process, it does not consider the full array of methods and their impact. This lack of research attention might hinder organizations developing PSS. Using in-depth interviews, this qualitative research systematically combines the extant conceptual literature on PSS design tools and processes with expert insights, thereby contextualizing how to lower thresholds in PSS design processes and how to increase the effectiveness of PSS design tools. The paper contributes to the literature on servitization and PSS by explicitly identifying twenty-one preconditions that support the PSS design process while integrating product and service innovation in close relation to the end-user.

The design of product-service systems is one of the more recent evolutions in the field of design and innovation. The approach for designing products and services in an integrated way holds the opportunity for developing more value for the user and the entire value chain. Despite the existence of various PSS design tools and methods to optimise this creative development process, it remains unclear to what extent the full array of tools supports the design team in their creative work. In this paper, we present the results of four years of iterative evaluation of a PSS Design Toolkit deployed in a graduate education setting, using the creativity support index (CSI), a psychometrically-validated instrument. By using the CSI longitudinally, the results enabled us to iteratively improve the PSS Design Toolkit to better support future generation designers for the challenges that come with designing these product-service systems.

Coupling is a key concept in the field of embodied interaction with digital products and systems, describing how digital phenomena relate to the physical world. In this paper, we present a Research through Design process in which the concept of coupling is explored and deepened. The use case that we employed to conduct our research is an industrial workplace proposed by Audi Brussels and Kuka. Our aim was to enrich this workplace with projection, or Spatial Augmented Reality, while focusing on operator interaction. We went through three successive design iterations, each of which resulted in a demonstrator. We present each of the three demonstrators, focusing on how they propelled our understanding of coupling. We establish a framework in which coupling between different events, be they physical or digital, emerges on four different aspects: time, location, direction, and expression. We bring the first three aspects together under one heading—coupling of meaning—and relate it to ease of use and pragmatic usability. We uncover the characteristics of the fourth aspect—coupling of expression—and link it to the psychological wellbeing of the operator in the workplace. We conclude this paper by highlighting its contribution to the embodied interaction research agenda.