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In recent years product service systems (PSS) receive substantially more attention in innovation literature. Manufacturers increasingly seek new value in service addition and service providers explore the integration of tangible elements in their offering. Current advancements in electronics, information and communication technology (ICT) make it possible to combine products and services in innovative and interactive ways that add significantly more value to the user’s experience. However, the integral character of these hybrids can make the design process rather complex, merging a diversity of disciplines and their underlying processes such as; electronics design, software design, service design and product design. Therefore, a specific PSS design tool - facilitating the process of tightly integrating product and service - was created and tested in educational setting, action research and document analysis served as research methods. The research brings forward visualized PSS concepts with context dependent requirements for product and service interaction and their intended user experience. The results enable us to propose a PSS continuum to elaborate and further refine existing PSS typologies, applied in the front-end of innovation. Furthermore they serve as input to distill several PSS strategies and underlying characteristics for experience value representation.

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front-end of innovation, product service systems, design, experience value representation, strategy, value creation, interaction, user experience