User Experience, Business Models, and Service Design in Concert: Towards a General Methodological Framework for Value Proposition Enhancement
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper depicts an innovative concept in brewing an effective business model. The proposed model is an integrative framework ranging from business model canvas, service design, to user experience. However, it still needs to be improved for publication.
1. The current gap in academic research or empirical practices should be articulated in details, such that the research positioning of this paper would be identified. The three streams of conceptual models shown in this paper have been widely used without any exclusiveness. However, they have different foci. The BMC focuses on the calculation of profitable operations; the UX concerns the co-creation opportunities of usability among users and manufacturers, while the service design emphasizes on streamlining the efficient throughput. Actually, they have many overlaps in inputs, processes, and outputs. The integrative guidelines must be specified to be the distinctiveness of this paper.
2. The cases shown in this paper are not the sources of contributing to the integrative model. Contrarily, these cases are just the samples which are used to examine the possibility of conceptual combination between BMC, UX and service design. Most of the cases roughly include three concepts in the business model innovation. However, these cases could not support the effectiveness of business model innovation caused from the degree of sufficiency, comprehensiveness and cohesion of integrating BMC, UX, and service design.
3. The integrative business model augmented with service design and user experiences by means of the canvas of value proposition. This is only a theoretical conjecture because the value proposition has more relatedness to service and product design and user interactions, contributing consumer benefits. However, the cases could not support this conclusion either. Indeed, the connections between these three concepts cover many counterparts, including key partners, customer relationship, key activities, channels, and so on.
4. The first half part of this paper related to the conceptual integration sounds an innovative business model. However, the last half part of real cases only supports the necessities of elements within the new model. It could not demonstrate the integration processes of a new business model innovation. Even though there are many supporting resources in the appendix, they are not contributed by the studying cases, but only the researchers’ opinions and suggestions. Unfortunately, a good conceptual framework may lose validity and efficacy if lacking of supporting from empirical evidence.
good enough!
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments and remarks..
We responded to them with explanations, amendments and changes in the manuscript, as shown in the accompanying document.
Regards,
Authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In general, I really appreciate the attempt to combine UX/BMD/SD, and it would be a great benefit for both science and commercial oriented organizations. The paper also shows, that the authors did lots of research and many frameworks, models, etc. are referenced and used in the paper.
However, in the current form, the paper is very hard to read, it is confusing and a clear structure is missing (see detailed comments below). A comprehensive restructuring and rewriting is needed. The process what was done and why is unclear. I would suggest to make a draft of the structure of the paper and discuss it with peers to find out if the structure of the paper is clear. After that, I would rearrange the existing text.
Detailed comments:
· General comments and questions
· Why focusing on user experience and not broaden up to customer experience?
· I would not try to improve UX per se (this is done by a whole research community via various journals and conferences), instead, in the paper I would only focus on the link between UX, BM and service design.
· I appreciate the idea to compare relevant UX models, see Tabel 1. However, I would recommend to do the comparison again and fill Table 1 in a way that it is more clear to the reader (See comments below)
· Section Introduction
· Please add references for the term business blueprints
· “A large portion of UX practice attempts to standardize UX outcomes” please add a reference for this. I would rather say, that methods of measuring UX are standardized, but I don´t understand how to standardize UX outcomes
· UX is (mostly) seen as holistic, or at least it is known in the community that UX is affected by various factors, so please show via references where UX is to narrow
· Please add reference for service system
· What is the difference between business model and business design?
· I would avoid the term “holistic UX outcome”. If you really want to focus on that, lots of desk research is needed.
· “UX model must be defined”: do you want to create a new model or do mean you have to select an existing UX model?
· “and is distinct from the conventional UX that is best known in the user 86 interface design in the software development” please add a reference for this
· “service development”: this is rather vague, please add 1-2 examples to understand what a service could be
· “In the majority of cases, six out of seven, the application of the framework showed positive results in the service and UX design, proving the usefulness and usability of the artifact …” this does not belong in the introduction, rather in conclusion section
· Section Literature Review
· “In this analysis, the four generic UX elements (user, artifact, interaction/experience, and context) have been identified”: have you created the classification into these for elements, or has this done by already? Please add a reference if it was already there. If not, please explain why you chose these four.
· I find the four generic UX elements not intuitive, and Table 1 raises many questions. In the column “User”, there is Individual, people and User, so what are the differences here? How is this linked to User characteristics? Furthermore, the element “Context” is also unclear and somehow irrelevant (only 3 things are in this column, the rest is included in Interaction/Experience. Also the term “Artifact” is unclear and it is unclear why it is relevant here. Of course, UX happens with an artifact, but it seems that it refers mostly to the word “Product”
· BMC is well known and a sound choice. However, please add 1-2 sentences why BMC was chosen and not Lean Business Canvas
· “To be homogeneous and harmonized, selected methods are of the same type of format (a map) and have similar model of application (filling templates).” I do not understand what is meant with “map” and “filling templates”
· In Table 2, please explain ISIM, MINDS, MDS, etc.
· Section Materials and Methods
· This section is somehow unclear. Title says materials and methods, but in the text the word “research” is heavily emphasized.
· “This research” is vague, please add a paragraph what you are going to explain in this section at the beginning
· It is unclear why you emphasize “qualitative” -> do you mean this is your methodological approach to combine the three research fields? If yes, qualitative (as an opposite of quantitative” seems not appropriate
· Please provide a clear structure of this section, it is very hard to understand which assumptions were made and how the things in this text (DSR, case studies, qualitative,…) are linked together.
· Step 1 to Step 6: unclear, how this is linked to the previous text in this section. Furthermore step 1 and 2 have already been described in the previous sections -> might be good to explain Step 1 to 6 in the introduction or before the literature review to explain how the process of your research is defined.
· “First, Framework for service innovation based on service design and foresight [59,93] defines four service design process phases – (1) map and understand, (2) forecast and ideate, (3) model and evaluate, (4) conceptualize and evaluate, being special since it explicitly 391 comprises a business model approach as a part of the design process. Second framework is Multilevel service design [80] which structures levels of service design for customer 393 experience – (1) designing the service concept, (2) designing the service system, (3) de-signing the service encounter.” This is very unclear, how is this linked to the literature review? Is this used to combine UX/BM/SD?
· You selected UX/BMD/SD models. It is unclear how they are then combined to something new (the framework?). If this is clear, step 4 makes sense, but at the moment it is unclear
· Section Results
· Unclear how this is linked to the previous section. Is “Artifact description” linked to the steps? Why the label “artifact description”? After the section literature description, I would expect to get introduced to a new model, which combines the three disciplines (in fact, this is done in 3.1 but the heading is misleading)
· How did you create SD-X-BM? Was this done via case studies? Maybe the problem is here that section Materials and Methods is very confusing
· “The first UX form, the targeted UX (TUX)” it seems that this is highly relevant -> why was this not explained I the literature review section?
· The text below figure 2 is too long, contains to many tiers/levels (UX segments, letters (a), (b), first and second UC form, etc.) => please create more structure here, this text is very hard to read. Furthermore beside description of the framework, also methods are described (also in running text), which adds another level of complexity
· Please describe the BMC in a separate section, in this text in this section it is too much.
· “First, the evaluation of the development process was carried out following …” please describe the process in a separate section, and focus here on the results.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments and remarks..
We responded to them with explanations, amendments and changes in the manuscript, as shown in the accompanying document.
Regards,
Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1. There is a complex and ambitious, well-documented approach. It is recommended to highlight the original elements of the proposed paper (contribution) as compared to the state-of-the-art existing literature.
2. Which are the reasons behind choosing the “Canvas” (Osterwalder) as business model?
3. It is suggested to properly use the concepts (i.e. words: requirements, objectives, goals – p.2, rows 71–72) across the paper.
4. Is the proposed methodological framework applicable in case of services only? (as long as “service design” is considered)
5. It is strongly recommended to explain the circumstances of the interaction between researchers and the “seven cases” (Croatian SMEs); the SMEs’ selection criteria and selection process; the interaction process itself; other (as pre/conditions to be met).
6. Was this interaction an “Interview” or a “workshop” or a “course”? Coherence – across the paper – is strongly recommended.
7. Who are the “participants” – are they the “interviewed users”? How were they selected? Which are the participation criteria?
8. How important are the demographic features – as SMEs’ demographics (age, size, etc.) and participants’ demographics?
9. There is a very rich literature base. It is suggested to revise the reference list –in two respects: keep the essentials only; and add more recent titles if possible.
10. Which is “this interdisciplinary field” (Abstract) – supposed to be the scope of work of this piece of research? Is it the “digitalized products and services”? Other – which? Clarification needed.
11. Ultimately, which is THE sustainability issue (in-line with the journal’s profile)? The last phrase: “furthermore, this framework should be tested against particular circular or sustainable BM (arche)types (e.g., create value from waste, deliver functionality rather than ownership, regenerate, share, etc.) to show the exact design contribution to sustainability goals” (p.21, rows 812–815) is a promise only, with not much argument.
12. The quality of the proposed paper would improve if it will be revised by a native English speaker.
The quality of English language is rather good.
Just minor revision conducted by a native English speaker is suggested - mainly as the phrase topic and phrase length.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments and remarks..
We responded to them with explanations, amendments and changes in the manuscript, as shown in the accompanying document.
Regards,
Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper is good enough now after a major revision. It should contribute to the innovation of business model as well as service design and user experience.
