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International Journal of Design Vol. 10 No. 1 2016

C. F. Yang and T. J. Sung

good social innovation ideas, but rather because they lacked

a concrete and sentient presentation interface. By combining

service design with the assistance of external designers, design

prototyping became relatively easy and feasible. As a result, the

stakeholders’ understanding of social innovation plans increased,

and more feedback could be collected through cost-effective

prototyping. This reduced the risk of problems developing in

large-scale implementation.

We discovered that an emphasis on “rapid prototyping” in

service design was a crucial activity for value co-creation. Rapid

prototyping emphasizes quickly proposing design assumptions,

creating prototypes, and entering the market for verification. With

the limited time and resources available, the cases could execute

designs and verifications multiple times, increasing design quality

and feasibility. Rapid prototyping can also aid the demonstration

and interaction of concepts, and use simple and visualized

interfaces to reduce costs and help stakeholders evaluate if the

concepts are feasible and to make possible modifications.

The three service design tools: the stakeholders’ map,

customer journey map, and service blueprint, remain the main

methods selected by each project team to do rapid prototyping.

Here, we proposed another three useful tools for value co-creation

in social innovation, including: 1) a story board: using story boards

the design concepts are clearly presented under the framework

of a timeline, helping participants to quickly understand the

context of the design, rather like watching a movie trailer. Value

propositions for key stakeholders and relevant touchpoints could

also be explained though the story board. 2) products and service

prototype: during the four projects, the workshop prepared a large

material desk with various materials (items with different shapes

and sizes such as Legos, paper, and cans) that could be used by

the design team members to quickly and conveniently create the

products and service prototypes; 3) desktop walkthroughs: this

tool helped to shrink the overall scenarios with figures and scenes

to fit on tables. The design teams also held rehearsals following

scripts and timelines, which is similar to role play.

Taking the “Design for Cancer Screening & Prevention”

project as an example, the purpose of the project was to improve

people’s willingness to undergo early cancer screening. The

Taiwanese government spends US$1.83 billion on cancer-related

treatment a year, which accounts for 27% of the total budget of

the National Health Insurance system. To increase the cure rate

and reduce the cost of cancer treatment, Taiwan has begun the

provision of free-of-charge screenings for oral cancer, breast

cancer, colorectal cancer, and cervical cancer, but the number

of people who have made use of these opportunities has been

low. After three months of investigation, the design teams used

customer journey maps and story boards to illustrate the current

conditions at cancer screening sites organized by 12 communities

in Taipei. The intangible service processes could be visualized, so

that service gaps could be defined easily. In addition, the design

team also did rapid prototyping to hold discussions with medical

experts by using concrete product prototypes, story boards,

or desktop walkthroughs. Finally, 10 concrete and innovative

solutions were proposed, and two design concepts have already

been successfully implemented (see Figure 7). The findings

regarding the effective approaches for value co-creation in social

innovation are displayed in Table 2.

Figure 6. Co-create innovative experiences in a sustainable agriculture project:

(a) the image board used in the field study,

(b) the design teams entering the farmland and experiencing the process of harvesting, (c) selling organic crop with farmers,

(d) the design teams using many pictures and drawings to demonstrate key touchpoints and interactions among stakeholders.