Service Design Handover to user experience design – a systematic literature review

Abstract

Context: Knowledge transfer plays an important role in digital Service Creation Projects where information should flow through service design, Agile UX, and software implementation phases. One context for these handovers exists in projects where the service designers participate in the early phases of exploring and scoping the service, while agile user experience specialists take over the digital parts of service design and programmers the software implementation. Objective: The purpose of this study is to summarise scientific knowledge into best practices for effective information flow in real world Service Creation Projects. Special attention is paid on an important and understudied project phase, knowledge handover from service design to software implementation, which is referred as Service Design Handover in this study. Method: A systematic literature review was conducted to analyse the current scientific knowledge on knowledge transfer in digital Service Creation Projects. PRISMA 2020 statement was used for reporting the review, which also influenced planning and execution of the systematic review process. SCOPUS search brought up 773 publications, and the full content analysis was done for the 41 most relevant publications. Results: Based on the literature analysis, the best practices for effective knowledge transfer are related to communication quality and quantity, circumventing the need for communication, and verifying successful communication. To provide an overview of effective knowledge transfer, frameworks of Service Creation Project information flow and Service Design Handover are proposed. Conclusion: The existing knowledge transfer literature is voluminous, but this literature review is the first to study knowledge transfer in Service Creation Project context. The framework, best practices, and list of potential problem sources in knowledge transfer provide new knowledge for managing the information flow in service creation. The research gaps found in this literature review show the need for future research, such as empirical studies on service creation practice.