A Service Science Perspective on Human-Computer Interface Issues of Online Service Applications

This paper proposes a framework for online service applications based on Service Science which identifies and enables a better understanding of the different issues faced by online service designers, engineers, and delivery personnel. The application of the Service Science framework is made possible by carefully distinguishing online service applications not only from traditional personal software applications but also from online information applications, such as the ones used by news and entertainment websites, through a process of specializing Pinhanez’s definition of customer-intensive systems (Pinhanez, 2008) to online applications. To demonstrate the utility of the framework, we consider the six basic characteristics of services, as traditionally defined in Service Science — customer-as-input, heterogeneity, simultaneity, perishability, coproduction, and intangibility — and derive from these characteristics a list of 15 different issues that are highly important for the design and evaluation of the human-computer interface of online services.