Design of emerging digital services: a taxonomy

There has been a gigantic shift from a product based economy to one based on services, specifically digital services. From every indication it is likely to be more than a passing fad and the changes these emerging digital services represent will continue to transform commerce and have yet to reach market saturation. Digital services are being designed for and offered to users, yet very little is known about the design process that goes behind these developments. Is there a science behind designing digital services? By examining 12 leading digital services, we have developed a design taxonomy to be able to classify and contrast digital services. What emerged in the taxonomy were two broad dimensions; a set of fundamental design objectives and a set of fundamental service provider objectives. This paper concludes with an application of the proposed taxonomy to three leading digital services. We hope that the proposed taxonomy will be useful in understanding the science behind the design of digital services.