Design Principles for Service Systems in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT)–understood as digitizing and connecting the physical world and its objects–uses a multitude of technologies to bring along many technical advancements. Overall, IoT is expected to have tremendous economic impact in the nearer future and to affect all sectors and settings of our business and private lives, e.g. in manufacturing, smart cities, healthcare, etc. Thereby, the value IoT systems can deliver depends on the services they can offer to users and customers. To leverage the potentials of IoT and its technical feasibility and superiority, not only the purely technological connectedness of things, but also the interplay and design of interfaces between IoT and people are crucial, i.e. people, software and hardware need to be orchestrated.To realize this interplay between IoT hardware, IoT software and people, all need to be integrated into existing value networks, e.g. patients and physicians need to be an integral part when designing IoT systems for medication adherence. While current research mainly focuses on empirically analyzing IoT systems and its effects, research concentrating on design knowledge for IoT systems is missing. The project wants to close this research gap and extend the existing body of knowledge by generating design knowledge for this highly promising area. To describe the involved stakeholders and technologies of IoT systems, the concept of service systems is used and a sociotechnical system’s perspective is taken. Service systems are defined as value-co-creation configurations of people, technology and value propositions, e.g. patients and their relatives, physicians and care personnel as the involved “people” who are “co-creating value” by working together to improve the patient’s quality of life while using “technology” such as IoT devices or infrastructures.