Enhancing Empathy Through AI in Service Systems

AI can assist service designers in better predicting user needs and expectations, enabling personalised experiences based on users’ past behavioural data. When artificial intelligence (AI) is involved in service delivery, it has its role in an overall service blueprint. AI components like chatbots or recommendation systems can replace or augment specific human touchpoints in the service journey. This requires service designers to illustrate how AI impacts the service system. Systems thinking can help in understanding the complexities of service systems, their interdependencies, the models that are included in them and the role AI can take to enhance empathy. Through our research, we bring in analysis from two service design project case studies and findings from a light literature review. We focus on identifying key findings on the role of AI in supporting the empathetic service design process, and how AI-enabled design platforms can promote a human-centred approach in organisational systems.