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page 141
The Role of Service Design and Co-design in the
Lifecycle of Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community
1
Chenfan Zhang a * | Daniela Selloni a | Valentina Auricchio a
a Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design: Milano, Italy.
* Corresponding author: chenfan.zhang@polimi.it
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 and technological advances have made online communication more common,
which has increased the number of online communities. However, online communities tend to
rise and fall rapidly, and maintaining active participants is vital to online community survival
and development. While online communities connect many diverse participants, they also add
to the complexity of the network and challenge participants to collaborate and participate.
Despite the widespread use of service design and co-design for collaborating and participating
in offline communities, there have been few studies examining their application and
contribution online. This study uses participatory action research as a methodology. It takes
China's online community, Chinese Service Design Community (CSDC), as a research object,
analyses its development process from 2019 to 2022, and combines the online community life
cycle proposed by Iriberri and Leroy as an analytical model to illustrate how service design
and co-design activities can contribute to the community's transition from "inception" to
"maturity" (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009). In addition, it also explores how service design and co-
design can help to produce the ‘legacy’ for the long-term development of online communities
by reflecting on the influences of the 'heroes' of online communities.
Keywords: Lifecycle of Online Communities, Co-design, Service Design, Community
Development.
INTRODUCTION
During the pandemic, people worldwide had to face the challenge of lockdown. Socialization
has shifted from "real" physical interaction to "virtual" platform communication. People
gather online, interact, and communicate remotely through social media platforms. Thus, the
development of online communities has increased. However, many online communities rise
and fall quickly, and online conversations tend to begin loudly but fizzle out without significant
progress. Communities evolve as members gather, and the continuous involvement of
community members in building and creating new content is an important reference for
external judgment of whether a community is "alive" or not. At the same time, online
communities have openness, enabling value co-creation among multidisciplinary
stakeholders from different backgrounds. Online communities are generally connected by
passions and interests instead of explicit benefits, which are different from traditional
1
This paper was initially published in the proceedings of the ServDes 2023 Conference - Entanglements and Flows. Service Encounters
and Meanings, which took place at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, from July 11 to 14, 2023. This is a revised and
improved version of the paper based on the feedback received at the event.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 142
organizations. Therefore, the critical challenge lies in understanding how to motivate
participants and integrate these resources to allow the community to grow and flourish.
Service design has evolved from creating service offerings to understanding the needs of
different stakeholders, focusing on organizational transformation (Maffei et al., 2015;
Junginger & Sangiorgi, 2009; Stickdorn et al., 2018) and exploring an ecosystem perspective
(Ostrom et al., 2015; Vink et al., 2021). Existing service design communities, such as Service
Design Network, focus on service design as an object of discussion by sharing best practices;
however, there is also an opportunity in considering service design as a tool for online
community building and collaborating. Service design has the potential to address the complex
ecosystem of online communities. It provides a holistic, collaborative, human-centred, and
iterative approach (Stickdorn et al., 2018). As a “transdisciplinary design practice” (Penin,
2018), service design adds value to different stakeholders. It also provides tools for
visualization and for stakeholders to engage in collaboration. Co-design as an activity can lead
to the creation of service and strategy, and co-design prototypes act as a “physical
manifestation” of service design (Meroni et al., 2018). As a result, multiple stakeholders can
be involved in the creative process by implementing this approach. In addition, it is also
consistent with the "collaborative" and the "human-centred" aspects of service design.
This paper explores how service design and co-design are involved in the online community.
Why should we introduce service design into online communities? How can co-design help
trigger online community dynamics? And how can co-design help online communities to
increase actors’ collaboration and growth? These analyses are based on the practical
experience of the building of the Chinese Service Design Community (CSDC). This community
is an unofficial organization composed of professional Chinese service designers. Emerging
due to the rise of service design in China and consequent students’ need for debates around
service design. Service design and co-creation as core concepts are consistently used in
community projects. CSDC has become an influential youth power gathering place counting
more than 9000 followers on WeChat.
The research presented in this paper is mainly based on participatory action research since
little exploration of service design applied to online communities has been found in literature.
CSDC, the community established by one of the authors, has been the object of observation
and analysis. Considering three years of practice within this community and analysis of co-
creation activities in four categories, the research shows how service design and co-design can
have a positive impact on online community development. This analysis is based on the
lifecycle model of online communities, focusing on the co-values and identity-building for
starting up the community, the maintenance of relationships, the accumulation and
interaction of information in the community, as well as discussing the impact of the core team
on the community long-term development.
1. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
1.1. Lifecycle of Online Communities
Online communities as “cyberspace” (Lee et al., 2003) are becoming increasingly popular due
to the growing digital population and transition. In the early stage of development, the
discussion about online communities focused on software and programming, such as the IBM
AlphaWorks and Linux communities (Sawhney & Prandelli, 2000), and gradually involved
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 143
psychology and sociology, which discuss their motivation and collective action (Iriberri &
Leroy, 2009). During the pandemic, online communities were frequently used as a supplement
or an emergency solution to remote collaboration (Erdogdu, 2022) and are now becoming a
recognized practice. Online communities are not developed linearly but iteratively, and “the
technology and mechanisms that support and ensure the success of online communities
should evolve to match their growth and evolution” (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009, p.18). One of the
online community success factors is the active participation and contribution of members to
enrich the community (Akar et al., 2019; Følstad, 2008; Iriberri & Leroy, 2009; Luo & Li, 2022).
In contrast, little has been done to document online community development processes and
provide guidelines to integrate success factors and design choices efficiently. In this paper, our
main reference to Iriberri and Leroy (2009) mentions the online community development
model with five steps.
1. Inception: because of some motivation and needs, people come together to form
online communities.
2. Creation: the initial group of members interacts within the community and
communicates outside the community to attract new members.
3. Growth: the common language is established, and the role of different members are
starting to diverge.
4. Maturity: formal organization and rules are established to discuss more diverse and
specific issues with the transition of old and new members and the change of
identity.
Death: poor participation, lack of producing new and quality content, lack of organization,
and of clear recognition of membership.
Figure 1. Lifecycle model of online community (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009), recreated by the author.
1.2. Service design and Co-design in the Online Community
Community innovation is regarded as a bottom-up innovation with characteristics of
democratization (Tang et al., 2011). Within the community, different actors with complex
relationships collaborate to co-create value, which generates an ecosystem (Rodríguez-López,
2021). Managing online communities requires engaging and coordinating with different
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 144
actors and maintaining this relationship network. These activities are strictly interconnected
to some essential features of the service design discipline and practice. Service is defined as a
co-creative practice in which “people collaborate in co-creating value in context by integrating
resources through usage, to achieve common and individual goals” (Holmlid et al., 2015, p.
546). Moreover, service design can be useful for coordinating different stakeholders and
defining rules to achieve value co-creation (Stickdorn et al., 2018). Penin points out co-
production as an intrinsic aspect of the nature of service design thanks to participatory and
co-creation attitudes and abilities (Penin, 2018). Hence, in this perspective, service design
seems to have a set of fundamental characteristics to support the online community operation.
As mentioned by Ezio Manzini: “… where social media connects people (in digital space)
…Today, surfing the web, we find thousands of websites that propose doing something
together” (Manzini, 2015, p.81). Co-design can be seen as a method that brings together people
with differing ideas and motivations, from a variety of backgrounds and with different skills
to take part in a series of conversations that seek to change the status (Selloni, 2017). It can
facilitate the creation of the “third space” (Muller, 2002), which is an overlap between two
spaces and their characteristics. In fact, the online community is the overlap space for
knowledge sharing (Faraj et al., 2016). This community creates a place for knowledge to flow
and highlights the co-creation of content and knowledge (Mozaffar & Panteli, 2022). However,
online communities are often used in design projects as a means of last resort service delivery
or as a "backdrop" for service delivery, but an exploration on how co-design and service design
can support the development of online communities is lacking.
2. PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH AS A METHODOLOGY
APPLIED WITHIN THREE YEARS OF CSDC
Based on existing literature, there is no clear relationship between service design and how it
is involved in building online communities. Thus, this research adopted participatory action
research as its primary methodology (Avison et al., 1999; Cole et al., 2005; Ozanne &
Saatcioglu, 2008) involving participants as part of the research processes, collaborating with
them and being sensitive to their needs. It is viewed as a democratic method of analyzing
complex systems to gain knowledge for social action.
To address the purposes of this study, action research was conducted within the emerging
CSDC established on July 17th, 2019 in China. The subsequent three-year iteration journey
constitutes the core of the participatory action research conducted in this study. Additionally,
it provides a reference based on the lifecycle of online communities in the service design area.
CSDC has attracted more than 300 young service designers from more than 40 universities
around the world (Table 1). In addition to the development of the community, the group of
official members from academia and industry is mainly focused on IT and consulting
companies. The purpose of this community is to involve young service designers and explore
the possibility of localizing service design practices in China. CSDC is an online community
focused on service design, mainly operated by the core team, and focuses on co-design as a
way to initiate and complete projects with community members and followers. The authors
are deeply involved in community building as one of the initiators of CSDC, using the
community as a research object.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 145
Table 1: CSDC members' incomplete university statistics (Zhang, 2022), redesigned by the author.
Country & Region
Number of Universities
Europe
8
United Kingdom
6
United States
4
Australia
2
Asia
24
Total
44
Figure 2: The community followers’ information, data from CSDC’s core team.
Due to a lack of practical cases for reference, CSDC mainly established preliminary
expectations through its actors' hands-on experience. Modifications of the expectations and
iterative action plans were made after every project was complete. Since its establishment,
CSDC has organized and co-designed more than 42 activities with service designers and
students and collaborated with multidisciplinary actors (Figure 2). They correspond to four
different kinds of project types: 1) Thematic discussion in Chat, 2) Webinar, 3) Online
workshops and events, and 4) Cooperation and collaboration projects (Zhang, 2022). In the
paper, we attempt to analyse three selected cases to understand better how co-design and
service design tools can contribute to online community development, especially at the
‘Maturity’ stage, and avoid the ‘Death’ end.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 146
Figure 3. The summary of CSDC’s projects and activities (Zhang, 2022), updated by the author.
The data collection and analysis included:
1. Documents: the planning briefings, project plans, internal meeting records, internal
discussion records, and release publishing via the official account on WeChat.
2. Participatory observations: the data content related to observations and records from
the author as participants or organizations.
3. Digital traces: the brainstorming and discussion track on the Miro board, the digital
materials, e.g., poster, postcode, and meeting video recording.
4. In-depth interviews: semi-structured questionnaire form to interview the different
actors in the community, including core team members, community members,
followers and external cooperation participants.
3. CO-DESIGN ACTIVITIES WITHIN CSDC DISCUSSED ACCORDING
TO THE COMMUNITY LIFECYCLE FRAMEWORK
Findings present how co-design and service design, embedded throughout this lifecycle, have
supported its development. These findings reveal their specific contributions at different
stages of the lifecycle. Further, this section discusses the impacts and challenges associated
with the roles of the core team members in the long-term development of the community. As
already stated, Iriberri and Leroy's community lifecycle framework (2009) was used to
summarize the community activity timeline of CSDC. This timeline can correspond to four
steps in the lifecycle of online communities.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 147
Figure 4. The lifecycle model of CSDC.
1. Inception: community establishment with two core members and over 50 students
from five universities. A community was established to foster learning about service
design among different schools and to create an environment in which exchange of
knowledge on service design can be achieved. Co-design activities include 'Thematic
Discussion in Chat” and “Cooperates projects - Service Design Bluebook 2022”.
2. Creation: first and second iterations of the community, hosting webinars, for example,
monthly interviews, and social media to continue to attract new members. The
Service Design Bluebook provides an opportunity for participants to build a common
language and provides topics for discussion.
3. Growth: community roles are gradually being differentiated as a result of the different
levels of involvement. There are some bystanders and some active members who are
willing to take on the role of curators, co-creators, workshop facilitators, or mentors
in online workshops and events.
4. Maturity: during the third and fourth iterations of the community, the core team
establishes certain rules relating to how new members could join, how members
could initiate activities, and how the core team could assist them.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 148
3.1.Building Co-value and Identity from Inception
Online communities start with motivations that bring people together. Motivation could
develop from a specific point, which can easily be transformed into action. For CSDC, the main
motivation was the absence of a place where young people could discuss service design.
"Information asymmetry" about different schools with service design motivated students to
join the community, and the "group chat" of social media facilitated this. The community grew
from this point onwards. Beyond actions, the co-value and members’ identity-building should
also be considered. Prior to establishing the community, co-founders had considered co-
design and service design as building blocks for the community structure. Although a clear
path was not provided became fundamental principles for the future. It is important to note
that these principles related to motivation are rooted in the value of community members,
which is to acquire a conscious identity. As in a virtuous cycle, the more members
acknowledge these values, the more they are motivated to participate and support the
advancement of these values, resulting in a greater sense of identity.
3.2. Co-design and Service Design Activities Support Online
Community Development from ‘Inception’ to ‘Maturity’
According to the analysis of the projects, findings reveal the importance and the need for co-
creative activities and how ‘co-design’ and service design tools worked in supporting online
community development from ‘inception’ to ‘Maturity’.
Relationships maintenance
A community is composed of people and is a complex network. Throughout the network, each
actor represents a ‘point’, with information flow and relationships as a line connecting them.
This constant flow keeps communities dynamic and vital. Keeping the material flowing
between a network and its points, including the connections between each point, is critical to
its success. This study points out how to use ‘co-design’ and service design ‘tools’ to maintain
relationships by:
1. Understanding the network: identifying the relationship between different ‘points’ and
understanding their flow is the first step in helping an online community establish
organizational rules and clarify discussion directions. Service design emphasizes that
organizations should look beyond one actor to a system or ecosystem perspective. Therefore,
it provides a perspective on understanding this network and how to collaborate with other
actors. Different service design tools can facilitate this, such as the stakeholder's map to help
actors understand their position and their relationships with other actors and how to
collaborate. Furthermore, it can also be used as a visual tool for community outreach.
2. Offering opportunities for stakeholders to access information: online community makes it
easier for people to connect, but the downside is significant. The time for project participants
to build trust and familiar is very short. Co-design can give participants a buffer zone of mutual
familiarity with ice-breakers and other interactive activities. These can help teams gain
confidence and encourage them to work with other stakeholders.
3. Building a strong sense of engagement: there are various roles in the community.
Community development correlates with the involvement of actors (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009).
Co-design allows actors to participate in community development. Thus, co-design enables
members to acknowledge ownership and creates values that enrich the community.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 149
“Chinese Service Design Youth Festival 2022 (CSDYF)” as an example of
implementation.
CSDYF is a festival whose mission is to amplify the voice of young service designers. This
festival is based on bottom-up and co-creative action, which differentiates this initiative from
traditional conferences. CSDYF 2022 is the second edition, in order to reach a wider audience
instead of only service designers, the organizers chose themes that cross-relate to rural
revitalization and service design. The organizational team structure in CSDYF 2022 was
improved from the previous year, with five function groups responsible for different sections.
The organisational team includes previous members and community core team members in
addition to new additions. The team included service designers, visual designers, government
staff and enthusiasts. During the process of planning, everyone was seen as the organizer of
this festival. Thus, participants took ownership of the project increasing the level of
willingness and enthusiasm. Co-design workshops were used to involve the organizational
team and project followers in planning. A stakeholder map allowed multidisciplinary actors to
understand their responsibilities and collaborate with other groups. Additionally, it also
attracted media partners and other industry players to amplify the communication and
dissemination of the project. Participants expressed that the stakeholder map was helpful in
understanding their position, their relationship with the project, and, most importantly, their
possible contributions to it and to the community.
Figure 5. The co-design online whiteboards of CSDYF 2022 on Miro, materials from CSDC’s core team.
Community Accumulation and Organization of Information to Drive Iteration
In online communities, communication through text, images, videos, files or links in group
chats, and interactions, such as records of people's actions on the platform, generate a large
amount of data. This data forms different portraits of community members and becomes a
reference for community organizations to make their next actions. In fact, the four different
types of community activities listed all rely on the continuous accumulation and iteration of
information for their development. At the same time, the exchange and sharing of valuable
information, on the one hand, increased the attention of community members to the
community, and, moreover, it became the asset of the community because of continuous
accumulation, increasing the value of the community itself (Banto, 2021; Manzini, 2015).
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 150
Therefore, how to collect and organize these scattered pieces of information is important for
community organizers to fuel iteration of innovation projects and enhance the sense of the
value of the community for the participants.
In response to this need, this study proposes three directions in which co-design can be used
to promote community development by:
1. transforming data accumulation into co-design projects: dividing the task of data
collection, clarifying its value to the community and its stakeholders, and visualizing
it to build consensus among participants;
2. providing corresponding tools: providing participants with corresponding templates
and rules for their tasks, coupled with appropriate guidance to facilitate the
completion of tasks, and increase their motivation to implement;
3. making the results public: gathering content and translating it into materials in the
database on the co-creation platform, which will be displayed on social media
platforms and used by the community as a public asset.
In terms of the use of tools, highly regarded service design tools include system maps and
service blueprints. Through the information flow, the data influence of various actors in the
community can be visualized directly, while the service blueprint provides an organized
picture of the entire project. In addition, there are some templates and backstages as support,
including the toolkits of templates (Figure 5) which are self-editable according to different
situations and stages of a project, and a co-design backstage (Figure 6) supported by Notion,
an all-in-one workspace with multiple modules that can display varied media data. The page
can be turned into a public website, allowing information to flow between platforms and
allowing participants to keep it updated.
Figure 6. Aha Co-design toolkit (https://csdcommunity.super.site/open-collaborate-toolkits), materials from
CSDC’s core team.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 151
Figure. 7 The connection between co-design backstage and frontstage, materials from CSDC’s core
team.
Island Lightkeeper as an example of implementation
The "Island Lightkeeper" project aimed to operate the CSDC’s public online archive for CSDC
by encouraging members and followers to participate. In exchange for the participants' efforts
in collecting cases, the organizer set up rules for self-regulatory action and actively monitored
the cycle for a six-week period. The collaboration platform was used to create a dashboard
that summarized of the project, its rules, and a list of participants, as well as the section of the
online repository dedicated to the event. Participants used the co-created online panel to
record and accumulate data and track their collection process. The archive had a basic
template for each collective section to improve efficiency. In addition, a public link was
provided, and the results could be used together by the participants, as well as the community
as a whole. Participant feedback posted on social media platforms encouraged new members
of the community to participate and contribute to the archive. After three sessions, the average
event satisfaction rate reached 4.6 (total score of 5), with an overall upward trend in rating.
Keep the community vitality with self-organized co-design activities
The vitality of a community can be measured in many ways, by monitoring the level of activity
and the generation of new content (Mustafa et al., 2022). This new content is the result of
active participation by community members in the process of co-creation. Since online
communities are relatively loosely connected, the participants are always in a dynamic state
of change during the project, and the continuous motivation of participants to participate in
the project is one of the ways to keep this dynamic relatively stable, a key to keeping the
community alive (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009). Furthermore, stakeholders can provide different
perspectives and ideas, which, on the one hand, allows many participants to contribute and on
the other hand, can lead to confusion, making it more difficult for organizers to make
community development decisions, reducing participants' willingness to participate, and
influences their perception of the community.
Online co-design activities provide a means for community members to quickly gather ideas,
collect feedback, and maintain an active state of engagement. With online co-design, more
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 152
community members can contribute and facilitate rapid brainstorming. Participants can join
and leave online co-design activities at any time, contributing directly to insights and
discussions during a fragmented time period. The online co-design process uses a whiteboard
or chat window to record information, unlike offline roundtables. Using virtual post-its, for
example, one can visualize and move different information for quick clustering, while in the
chat one can organize and retain information. In addition, co-design results can be presented
intuitively. The whiteboard can quickly transform into proof of participation, while chat
messages can be transcribed and written into an article, resulting in new collisions of ideas. In
co-design activities, tools are very flexible, and some of them must be reorganized or re-
designed depending on the actual contexts. It is most common to use cards with various
functions, such as question cards: each card has a variety of questions that surround the ideas,
and these are used to stimulate discussion and collect ideas. Cards can be used to separate the
content which needs to be discussed, with text and pictures, etc., in order to stimulate deep
discussion. As a result of the research, the two methods of questioning, HMW and What if, have
been shown to be very suitable for co-design based on chat windows as the conversation
environment.
“For Whom Community Building is Made” as an example of implementation
Figure 7. The co-design online whiteboards of the online round table “For Whom Community Building is
Made”, materials from CSDC’s core team.
This activity aimed to connect CSDC's service designers with people involved in offline
community development for conversations and experiment with the co-design rules and tools
formulated by the CSDC’s core team. For example, the four recruited event organizers and
participants were asked to create personal cards in the community's database for information
accumulation and co-creation icebreakers. Firstly, the organizational team conducted desktop
research to search for information about community and service design, stakeholders, and
case studies related to this project. Before the event, the team used case cards and question
cards that were very effective in icebreaking and facilitating quick discussions among diverse
participants. During the event, participants, including academics, community workers,
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 153
residents, and service designers, were invited to an online meeting. This whiteboard was
exported as a commemorative document, and the link was made public after the event. After
the discussions, an article was published on Wechat, which received over 1,000 reads and was
retweeted several times. In a follow-up, this activity prompted members of the participating
organizations to take the initiative to organize another offline discussion.
3.3. ‘Maturity’ to Long-term Development
To maintain vitality in online communities, promoting co-creation and providing self-
organizing tools and collaborative platforms is not enough. Although it is not the focus of this
article, it is also important to emphasize that the core team plays a significant influencer. The
core team is seen as the "heroes" of the online community, representing the values that bring
the community together. The role of the hero is not something peculiar to online communities,
but it is a feature that has also been investigated in social innovation communities: for
example, Meroni (2007) talks about ‘creative communities’, i.e. communities emerged from
the bottom up thanks to the effort of few activists to solve daily problems at the local level.
Then, Manzini (2015) and Selloni (2017) reported the various difficulties that those
communities faced in keeping vitality at the maturity stage, also because of the ‘fatigue’ of the
heroes who cannot always contribute while maintaining the same level of energy and activism.
For this challenge there is no single solution, and several strategies have been experimented
within the field of social innovation: some of them are connected to making participation alive
through continuous co-design activities and better designing the governance of the
community itself identifying roles and rules (Meroni and Selloni, 2018).
We may say that something similar is currently under experimentation in CSDC: the core team
initially took on the role of initiator and activity executor; after the maturity of the community,
they gradually began to assist or catalyze co-creative activities. The members can produce
interactions that bring vitality to the community, but the core team still needs continuous
input. Thus, facing the challenge of more long-term development, the turbulence that may
arise from the turnover of core team members is a challenge to the survival of the community.
To address this challenge, co-design activities’ processes, methods and platforms proposed by
the core team in response to community development, which can be seen as the ‘legacy’. Over
time, the bonds between members of the community are strengthened, and the 'legacy' is
referred to and used repeatedly, gradually becoming shared rules and values within the
organisation. Moreover, the ability of an online community to grow with its members will
contribute to its long-term growth. Continuous participation of members in community
building, i.e., co-design activities, members’ sense of companionship and belonging will be
strengthened. The number of "heroes" in the community has increased as a result. This will
gradually reduce the workload of the core team and they are also likely to be the successors
to the core team. There are therefore possible to achieve a balance for long-term development.
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 154
4. CONCLUSION
Figure. 8 How co-design helps the online community stay alive in the maturity stage.
Service Design has the potential to support online community development and engagement
in many fields. This research has experimented this potential within the community of service
designers in China and has demonstrated how participative approaches and design methods
can support the creation of online innovation networks. Online communities can break
geographical limitations, incorporate more stakeholders, and facilitate communication. The
introduction of co-design contributes to value establishment of the online community at the
outset and lays the foundation for the subsequent development phases. In addition, co-design
activities can help to maintain community vitality. Community organizers co-create activities
with members by setting rules and providing support, motivating participants, and creating
high-quality content continuously. In addition, co-creation can be considered a form of service
that organizers provide for community development and its governance definition. It can be
seen as a means to build emotional links between members and the online community and to
cultivate potential multiple “heroes”. The presence of multiple and diverse heroes is key for
creating a vital community and feeding it with a variety of activities rich community activities
in CSDC. The growing number of followers in CSDC confirms this.
The purpose of this study is to identify a set of strategies to keep online communities alive and
achieve their sustainable development through service design interventions and co-design
Zhang, C.; Selloni, D.; Auricchio, V.
(2023). The Role of Service Design
and Co-design in the Lifecycle of
Online Communities: Cases from the
Chinese Service Design Community.
Strategic Design Research Journal.
Volume 16, number 01, January –
April 2023. 141-156. DOI:
10.4013/sdrj.2023.161.11.
page 155
approaches. This study uses Community Lifecycle as a method of analysis. Firstly, in the
‘Inception’ stage, the study presents the value of co-design activities in constructing online
community membership. Then, at the level of community co-creation, the study presents the
performance of the three co-creation activities of the service design community at different
lifecycle stages of the online community. Finally, this study provides an overview of the co-
design activities in the ‘Maturity’ stage, and a reflection on as well as in the long-term
development and governance definition to avoid the death of the community and to maintain
high its vitality, diversity and richness. The potential to strengthen emotional ties between
members and the online community for sustainable development is pointed out.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The data and content of this article are thanks to all the members who participated in these
co-creation activities in the community.
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