Know Techn Pol

DOI 10.1007/s12130-009-9066-z

ORIGINAL PAPER

Relational Services
Carla Cipolla & Ezio Manzini

Received: 10 November 2008 / Accepted: 3 February 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Recent research projects have looked for

social innovations, i.e., people creating solutions
outside the mainstream patterns of production and
consumption. An analysis of these innovations indicates the emergence of a particular kind of service
configurationdefined here as relational services
which requires intensive interpersonal relations to
operate. Based on a comparative analysis between
standard and relational services, we propose to the
Service Design discipline an interpretative framework
able to reinforce its ability to deal with the interpersonal relational qualities in services, indicating how
these qualities can be understood and favored by
design activities, as well as the limits of this design
intervention. Martin Bubers conceptual framework is
presented as the main interpretative basis. Buber
describes two ways of interacting (I-Thou and
I-It). Relational services are those most favoring
I-Thou interpersonal encounters.

C. Cipolla (*)
Federal University of Rio de JaneiroCoppe,
Ilha do Fundo, Centro de Tecnologia,
sala F 123,
21941972 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
e-mail: cipolla@pep.ufrj.br
E. Manzini
Politecnico di MilanoIndaco,
Via Durando 38/A,
20158 Milan, Italy
e-mail: ezio.manzini@polimi.it

Keywords Service design . Interaction design .

Design for sustainability . Social innovation .
Philosophy . Martin Buber

Relational Innovations
Martin Buber (18781965) has profoundly influenced
those who are interested in interpersonal encounters.
Bubers writings about what he discovered by living life
in relation to others can be misunderstood and ignored
due to its poetic complexity, but his voice is part of an
authentic Copernican revolution, a changing in the
place of thought from the subject to otherness
(Bartholo 2001). It corresponds to the affirmation that
the I without the Thou1 is impossible (Buber
1921).
This affirmation is part of his dialogical principle,
i.e., the distinguishing factor that makes us really
humans. The fundamental fact of human existence,
according to Bubers anthropology, is man with man
(Buber 1947). This idea and sensibility is deeply
rooted in our identities and is extended to define our
entire life. All actual life is encounter (Buber 1921).
Relations, in a dialogical perspective, are lived
between us: On the far side of the subjective, on this
side of the objective, on the narrow ridge where I and
Thou meet, there is the realm of between. This reality
Some translators, based on the original in German Ich and
Du, use the word Thou instead of You.
1

C. Cipolla, E. Manzini

() shows the way, leading beyond individualism

and collectivism, for the life of future generations
(Buber 1949).
The main question raised in our contribution concerns the possibility of designing services that are
deeply rooted in relational qualities. This question
emerged out of two international projects2 which discussed the potentialities of the collaborative creativity
in everyday life, manifest in creative communities
(Manzini, 2005a),3 to generate and diffuse new and
more sustainable ways of living in urban environments.
An analysis of the social innovations (Mullgan 2007)
organized by these communities revealed that they are
prevalently organizing serviceswhich range from
childcare to care of the elderly, from looking after
green spaces to alternative forms of mobility, from the
building of new solidarity networks to the realization
of unprecedented housing typologiesthat indicate an
emerging new service model deeply and profoundly
based on the quality of interpersonal relations between
participants. Starting from that point, our intention in
the next paragraphs is to further our understanding of
the interpersonal relational qualities of these innovative
services by placing them in a Buberian interpretative
framework, in which participantsmen and women
are seen neither as users or clients nor as theoretical
humans but as relational beings.
Our contribution is based on an analysis of some of
these innovations in order to understand how they can
become the object of a Design agency, i.e., how the
Service Design discipline can deal with them, what
can be learned, and how their own practices can be
rethought in the light of this comprehension. The
main question to be answered is how these qualities
can be understood and favored by design activities
and the limits of this design intervention.

These projects are part of a series of activities started over

5 years ago by the Politecnico di MilanoDIS Research Unit,
Indaco Department - in Europe (EmudeEmerging Users
Demands for Sustainable Solutions, funded by the European
Commission) and extended later to Brazil, China, India (CCSL
Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles, backed by the
UNEPUnited Nations Environment Program).
Groups of innovative citizens organising themselves to solve
a problem or to open a new possibility, and doing so as a
positive step in the social learning process towards social and
environmental sustainability (Manzini 2005a).

Interpretative Framework
Bubers intent in (his magnum opus) I and Thou
(1921), as in many of his later works, is to bring his
reader closer to a twofold attitude (being Thou or
being It). In the description of these two basic words,
he makes it clear that I-Thou and I-It cover every
possible kind of encounter. We simply live this
polarity, and it does not apply solely to interhuman
issues, but rather to any and all forms of between.
The I-Thou relation is the most unique feature of
being human. It is the ability to truly relate with the
other, a mutual relationship including both dialog and
encounter. This I-Thou encounter requires no
concepts or certainties. When I relate to any Thou
I hazard into an unknown adventure, with no sure
definitions or classifications.
When I interact with It, I always confront
something I know, that I know is an It and about
which I might wish to know more through my actions
of knowledge. When I relate to a Thou, I always
have before me a person whom I do not know entirely
and whom I will never know unless I listen to what
his presence tells me and lets me know of himself.
The distinctive characteristics of I-It and IThou reside principally in the difference between a
relation and an experience, as pointed out by
Buber (1921): The world as experience belongs to
the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou
establishes the world of relation.
The relation between an I and a Thou is
immediate; the interaction between them happens
without the interposition of any concept, any imagination or fantasy. No prior knowledge intervenes between
them. Each one is, for the other, a pure presence.
Exactly because of that it is an action that happens only
in the present time. Therefore as long as I am in an
I-Thou relation I will stand before an irreducible
being who bars me from seizing him through my own
knowledge.
The experience between an I and an It does not
happen in the present time, even when the two
persons are simultaneously one in front of the other.
The I-It experience happens in the past time,
because it is always anticipated by preconceptions
and classifications that each one has previously
elaborated about the other. The I in an I-It
experience is not in front of a presence but in front
of an object to be judged and valuated (Cipolla 2005).

Relational services

The I confronts the other as a presence or as an

object: What is essential is lived in the present,
objects in the past (Buber 1921).
Relational qualities here have a specific inbetween definition. Relation is a result of openness
to others. When man meets man, when one human
being turns to another human being as a presence,
the possibility of relation arises, moving from I-It
experiences to I-Thou relations and vice versa. The
in-between dimension is lived in service interactions. The quality of interpersonal relationships in a
service will depend on the extent to which I-Thou
relations can happen.

Standard and Relational Services

Relational services are defined here as those deeply
based on interpersonal interactions, particularly favoring I-Thou encounters. They are challenging the
standard way of conceiving and offering services. To
introduce our analysis, let us consider some comparative examples.4
The standard service, usually called School Bus,
is our first example. It does not operate based on
interpersonal relations because the driver is an
employee: he is part of the service like a part in a
mechanical operation. He can perform his function
on an anonymous basis and could be substituted by
another driver with the same technical skills. Some
interpersonal output can be generated in the interaction with users, like friendship or intimacy, but this is
not seen as an essential part of the service operation,
i.e., it is an unexpected result. More than that, the
interpersonal relations between the students and the
bus driver in the service performance threatens
service efficacy: Do not talk to driver when bus is
in motion. This service configuration does not
operate on unmediated encounters between participants and strongly favours an I-It basic word.
On the other hand, Walking Bus is a service
encouraging children to walk to and from school on
foot, following predefined routes in the safety of a
group under the supervision of one or more adults
(generally pensioners on a voluntary basis). It is a
4
All cases of relational innovations presented in this study are
referred to Emudes (see note 2) case study collection (Meroni
2006).

service based on the interpersonal relationships between teachers, parents, children and pensioners, who
are even called grandmothers or grandfathers. Therefore, the efficacy of the servicein its operationis
strongly based on the relational qualities produced
between them. Also because of such interpersonal
relations, the participants cannot easily be replaced.
Together, they produce more than a transport service;
they produce a common story and identity. These
relations are an essential part of the service operation
and one of its most significant benefits. It goes beyond
those directly involved: all the neighborhood contributes because while walking through the streets the
members of the group are also relating with their
locality. In synthesis, transporting children on this way
requires highly personalized and relational dynamics,
favoring I-Thou encounters between participants
and, consequently, also the regeneration of the local
social fabric. It is a good example of what we mean by
a relational service. We must add that this relational
way of doing also reduces the time spent in traffic
(traffic jams in the city), the consumption of fuel and
acoustic pollution.
Standard Services
In the standard service model, [agents] and [clients]
are performing predefined roles. The service activities
subsist in the performance between the two. It is the
image that usually comes to mind when we think
about services. The point of intersection of the
service performance occurs when the two distinct
areas, the provider and the client area, meet. The
paradigmatic example of the intersection area or
interface is the service-counter and the usual
example is a bank. This example illustrates how in
these services, the encounter between persons is
intermediated and based on a specifically designed
apparatus in a way that favors the perception of each
other as It. The interpersonal encounters between
the participants are not considered an essential
requirement to a satisfactory service performance.
Standard services are designed and operate mainly
on a specific form of rationality which tends to focus
on the hows of an action, rather than its whys.
The main criterion by which to evaluate its qualities is
quantitative, usually the productivity of people
involved. These characteristics can also relate to
professional-based services, i.e., the presence of

C. Cipolla, E. Manzini

experts, or specially trained personnel delivering

benefits to clients.
Services have not always been delivered following
this approach. Industrialization determined an important historical change in the way services were
carried out (Levitt 1972, 1976). One paradigmatic
example of the service rationalization process is
the supermarket, which substituted the traditional,
localized, district shop. The use of standardized processes and the concept of self-service reduced interpersonal contact in service provision. Progressively, the
incorporation of technological and communication
devices in service provision led to automatization
(e.g., self-service through automatic cash dispensers)
and to delocalization (e.g., the use of phones and
internet; Pacenti 2004).
Regarding the interpersonal dimension of services,
the application of concepts based on assembly line
techniques to service provision had several undesirable
consequences for relational qualities. In our view, these
difficulties are exemplified by the concept of smile
incentive, i.e., employees were instructed to put a
smile on their face during the service encounter. The
manufacturing and commercialization of this supposed
happiness clearly characterizes the quality of such
interpersonal encounters.
Let us cite Levitt (1972) to better understand which
kind of interpersonal encounters in services, designers
were called to develop: If machinery is to be viewed
as a piece of equipment with the capability of
producing a predictably standardized customersatisfying output while minimizing the operating
discretion of its attendant, that is what a McDonalds
retail outlet is. It is a machine that produces, with the
help of totally unskilled machine tenders, a highly
polished product. Through painstaking attention to
total design and facilities planning, everything is built
integrally into the machine itself, into the technology
of the system. The only choice available to the
attendant is to operate it exactly as the designers
intended. However, Levitts (1972) promised increased service productivity has not been truly
realized. Economists started to perceive that service
delivery is, in practice, constrained by the capacity of
individual human servers (Baumol 1966).
By the early 1990s, most service providers turned
their attention back to the human element and
personalized their services. Employees were empowered to customize the service encounter to the

individual characteristics of customers. The Service

Design discipline acknowledged (Pacenti 2004) that
the way to ensure service interface efficiency was
personalization. A good interface is able to listen to
the client; is easily adapted to clients demands
(flexibility); and offers clients all the information
required to enable his/her participation in the service
interaction. By the late 1990s, an approach based on
the value of the experiences emerged. Goods and
services were no longer enough in the context of a
new economic era, in which all businesses must
orchestrate memorable events and transformations for
their customers (Pine and Gilmore 1999).
Even though the traditional user/client image
progressively changedfrom a final, passive recipient to a service coproducerand although marketing strategies were oriented to build social ties with
clients and engage them in partnerships, all these
approaches still considered a service model performed
by two main actors: agents (representing an organization) and a client.
Relational Services
Considering the standard service modelwhich
corresponds to an intersectional interaction model
(client + agent)the relational service model introduces a circular interactional model. The circularity
serves to illustrate that this model is based on an
approach where benefits are reciprocally produced
and shared by the participants, who collaborate in a
way that favor the perception of each other as a
Thounot as an Itin their interpersonal
encounters.
The service called Living Room Restaurant is
considered here as a paradigmatic example of this
service model. It is a service in which a family runs a
restaurant in their own living room. After reserving
places via email or a phone call, complete strangers
can literally come and sit at the dining table with
them. After a short chat and getting acquainted with
all the guests, dinner is served. Guests can choose the
background music they want and help by clearing
the table between each course. The members of the
family sit at the ends of the table and between courses
they change places so they can talk to everyone
present. The client even helps lay the table. In this
situation, is the family promoting the restaurant a
provider or a host? Can the users be defined as

Relational services

clients or guests? Certainly, the roles between

agents and clients are not clearly defined.
It is a service based on interpersonal relational
qualities. First of all, it is conceived to run in a space
that is traditionally considered to be private, even
intimateones own homewhich is made available
to others. Opening your own space also means opening
your own intimacy, the first step in favoring an I-Thou
encounter. Making ones intimate space available (in the
above cases, ones own home) means making oneself
vulnerable: the other person may hurt or betray me,
but first and foremost can reach me (Cipolla 2005).
Trust is the other essential interpersonal quality
required from participants: The Living Room Restaurant is open to everyone, i.e., total strangers are
received in the family living room. If we consider that
this solution runs in an urban context, it can be
considered as a particular form of trust and openness. The host family invests their trust in
others, but there is also a certain level of trust
required from guests: they are entering someone
elses place, and who knows if this unusual service
could be a trap. Certainly, there are mechanisms to
relieve this tension: indications about the service
trustworthiness are passed by word of mouth, for
example.
In this service model, service scripts or previously
defined performances hardly seem applicable. People
are personally involved, they are not representing
someone else or operating according to a definite
plan. Participants are presences one for another. The
meaning of what is being done and the personal
engagement are essential components of these services. The main criterion by which to evaluate its
qualities is the openness to alterity5 and collaboration.
It follows that these forms of organization are
distinctly different from the usual concept of standard
service. This is the opposite of our paradigmatic
example of the service encounter taking place over
a counter: when we stand in front of a counter, we do
not necessarily need to know and have a personal
relationship with the person serving us.
The interpersonal relations between the participants are an essential part of the relational service
operation and generate a particular form of efficiency
5
Alterity here is used with reference to Levinas (1961,
1998) and includes the capacity to deal with interpersonal
differences, i.e., with otherness.

in achieving desired results. These services propose

an approach that focuses more on actions or
relations than on things (De Leonardis 1998)
which leads to environmental benefits. They enable
people to share, in order to consume fewer environmental resources, particularly considering that sharing is an intensive relational activity. The Living
Room Restaurant, for example, improves the utilization of existing resources (in this case, peoples
own houses). At the same time, it is a service that
improves or regenerates contexts of life, enabling and
stimulating participants to collaborate with others. It
means that relational services are able to promote a
social learning process toward sustainability, indicating a way of living based on sharing and
collaboration, promoting the reinforcement of local
social fabric and the creation of new common goods.

Enabling Relational Services

Considering the analogy and effective transposition
between Interaction Design and the emergent Service
Design, Pacenti (1998) affirmed that the role of
designers and their specific area of intervention is to
design the interactions between the users and the
visible6 part of the service provision, that happens
through what have been called service interface. The
service interface is the area in which the agents
representing the organizationand the clients interact.
However, Pacenti (1998) recognized that services
are a special kind of interfaceunlike machine/device
interfacesmade up of human beings, i.e., service
interactions cannot be totally previewed and controlled.
Although a service script may have been designed
services are defined and redefined during their performance. This means that no one can fully design a
service, and this affirmation introduces a key issue for
the Service Design discipline. It concerns the difficulty
of designing a service because it presents (also) an
unpredictable human aspect. If this is the essential
challenge that needs to be faced by every study on
Service Design, for us here, it is even more remarkable.
As relational services are qualitatively oriented to
favor I-Thou encounters, these services are those that
The invisible elements are all the actions, structures, and
solutions that support the service but with which users do not
have direct contact (Pacenti, 1998).

C. Cipolla, E. Manzini

more radically present a limitation to a direct design

intervention in interhuman interactions. I-Thou relational encounters happen in present time; they are
immediate, i.e., this specific interpersonal interaction
needs to be favored by a solution that does not impose
the interposition of any predefined procedure between
participants. Each participant, for the othersand for
the designer himselfneeds to be perceived as a
presence, not as an object.
Therefore, the production of relational qualities can
only be meta-designed, in the sense that the design
intervention needs to be placed behind or beyond
these qualities. Considering service design practices,
relational services can only be enabled, i.e., they
need to be designed in such a way as to start up,
support, and continuously sustain interpersonal
encounters between the participants (Cipolla 2005).
It means that it is necessary to place the relational
service model alongside the one of services as
disabling systems. If today, the most widely held idea
is one in which a service itself is designed considering
users only as an expression of problems (problems to
solve requiring a minimum of participation on their
part), the relational service model must instead start
with what the participants know how to, can, and
want to do. In other words, a relational service must
be favored by an enabling solution,7 i.e., one that
matches a users desired result with an offer of the
means by which to achieve it using his own
capabilities (Manzini 2005a, b). It consists of tools
and organizational models that promote the activation
of a relational service as well as give support in its
operation.
All services rely on user participation. However
relational services, more than other kinds of service,
require participation and engagement. It is necessary
not only to be operationally active but also personally
involved. Participants, in a relational perspective are
co-producers, bringing knowledge and will, but above
all else, they bring relational capabilities.

The concept of enabling solution therefore indicates a line of

research concerning the possibility of developing products,
services and knowledge conceived as systems that diffuse and
strengthen social innovations. This line of research is promoted
by Politecnico di Milano (Indaco Department, DIS Research
Unit) also in collaboration with the Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro (Coppe, LTDS, Desis Research Unit).

Acknowledgments This paper has been written in collaboration by the two authors. C. Cipolla wrote paragraphs one to
three and E. Manzini the fourth one. This work is part of the
PhD dissertation of the first author (Cipolla 2007), developed at
Politecnico di MilanoIndaco Department, DIS Research Unit,
coordinated by the second author.

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