Service researchers have employed routine dynamics theory to examine the practices on value co-creation routines. Prior research suggested that the manuals and work role behaviors of employees interact to enhance the effectiveness of routines. To facilitate comprehension of this phenomenon, our study investigated the complex interrelationship between the utility of manuals, the work role behaviors in the context of home visiting rehabilitation services. To conduct the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, questionnaires and monthly sales data were collected from 52 professionals in charge of rehabilitation at company A. The results showed three pathways that led to high sales and four pathways that led to low sales. The findings suggest that manuals contribute to high sales only when employees use them adaptively and take initiative to improve their work. Simply creating and distributing manuals is not enough to achieve high sales.

This paper reports a technology development process for physicians’ work style reforms that emerged from user research conducted at a hospital as a service design practice. We examined the usefulness of these techniques by reflecting on our practice through service design theory. User journey maps (UJMs) were used, one of the visualization techniques, as communication tools for sharing insights among stakeholders. The effectiveness of using UJMs was classified according to the three motivations proposed by Segelström (2009), and common forms of usefulness across cases were analysed. As a result, this paper presents (1) the process of creating UJMs, (2) the characteristics, contents, and differences among UJMs and their creation processes, and (3) the communicative utility of UJMs. Through this analysis, this study organizes and visualizes the generative, descriptive, and communicative functions of UJMs in service design practice.