User’s appreciation of engagement in service design: The case of food service design

⌈Résumé⌋ This research focuses on the engagement in service design. It aims at understanding how users appreciate or not their own engagement in the service process. As a case study for the experiment, various ways of ‘making tea’ were used, and were presented to the subject. Based on the repertory grid method and the means-end chain technique, subjects’ preferences and mental model evaluation structure were captured and analyzed. As a result, two major aspects were extracted: the preference for easiness of preparation, and preference for control over the preparation process. Finally, it was noticed and discussed that engagement in service design was perceived as positive for social services, but bothering for personal one. Also, user’s control and service feedback to the users’ senses were discussed and proposed as service design recommendations.