Service relationships focus on the solution value and the experience value that are realised by the customer in service encounters. In today's techno-social and business environment, satisfying service design necessitates conscious design efforts to harmonise a mix of tangibles and intangibles such as people, objects, technology, systems, and processes.Specifically, we must now think in terms of designing for the experience of interacting with a constellation of "touch points" rather than channels. The coordinated operation of a group of interconnected Touch Points necessitates different considerations than designing individual Touch Points, which is difficult in and of itself.Multidisciplinary teams and collaboration with end customers would be essential to accomplishing the formidable task. By focusing on the service experience phenomenon and providing a framework useful in designing for a desirable customer experience, we attempted to contribute to the emerging body of knowledge and practises in service experience design.

We first provided a sharper definition of the concept of "touch point,"  adopted an ecosystem perspective, and modelled the service relationships anchored in customers' interactions with Touch Points during service encounters. Later, Pattern Language, which is an experience-focused, participatory approach for designing complex systems, was identified as a suitable candidate on which a design framework could be based. To gain a better understanding of the service experience phenomenon, existing knowledge was investigated, not only from pattern languages but also from various other disciplines and exploratory studies.From there, extensive data pertaining to service experiences, particularly interactions with Touch Points and Touch Point Ecosystems, was gathered in order to iteratively create the design patterns and language.An intermediate formative assessment was done to confirm that we were on the right track, and the language was refined. We also conceptualised the other components of the framework: a process for application of the pattern language and a "tool" to apply the pattern language.