Information Systems and Service Design (Fall 2011) UC Berkeley, School of Information

Who are we designing for? A service system might have users, operators, customers, clients, citizens, managers, buyers, champions… and in any particular domain we would classify them more precisely as doctors, patients, teachers, students, and so on. We need the broader concept of “stakeholder” to include "all the claimants inside and outside the firm who have a vested interest in the problem and its solution.” The actor or service at the end of an information flow, often the stereotypical “end user” or “customer,” is usually designated (often by default) as the most important stakeholder or focal point of the service system, especially when the service system contains a person-to-person context. Nevertheless, this point of view is arbitrary, and many of the actors or services in a service system could be alternative or secondary points of view, resulting in a different design.

In addition to managing stakeholders, a project team should also manage risk. Risk Management--the practice of identifying, assessing, and prioritizing project risk-- helps teams develop a risk strategy determining which risks should be accepted (do nothing), avoided, mitigated, or transferred (as to a third party).