A Proposal of Metrics to Assess the Creativity of Designed Services

An emerging thread of research is represented by the attempt of quantitatively assessing creativity, its dimensions and how it influences the design process. The endeavour of previous works has consisted in the assessment of creativity concerning designers, methodologies, concepts and products. As the scope of engineering design is expanding so to include not traditional aspects of the product development process, the paper proposes metrics tailored to evaluate the creativity of services. Such metrics are built as a result of the extension and adaptation of previously formulated criteria, including the evaluation of novelty and usefulness. An exemplary sample of successful innovative services is considered, giving rise to a considerable variability of creativity scores. The outcomes may represent a starting point for a wider discussion about which dimensions of creativity majorly impact the success of products and services in the marketplace.