Human and Product Design Differ

Module 2 Part A:
Name two factors that could make service design much different from product design. Please describe in your own terms your rationale.
Organizations should define their product and service designs to convey the importance of the goods or services they offer as well as present the structure their organizations represent. Product and service designs bear many similarities, including their intentions, goals, and the driving forces that influence them. Conversely, service design and product design differ for a number of reasons. Two of these factors, tangibility and terms of delivery, demonstrate how one can differentiate between the two types of designs.
For example, products are tangible, and services are usually intangible. This leads to the next factor; services are not stocked or stored nor can they be inventoried. On the other hand, products represent visibility and can be accounted for in terms of inventory. In regard to delivery, products can be distributed easily and expediently, but services depend on location to determine their convenience and feasibility.
Part B
Think of a new or revised product or service that you would like to see on the market. Discuss the implications of producing that product or service relative to legal, ethical, and environmental issues.
The product I would like to introduce would be robots who would virtually serve as human beings – but would be used as butlers, maids, drivers. In other words, I guess the robots would be virtual slaves. I don’t believe there would be any ethical or legal issues at first, but I believe as time goes on, the robots would develop “human” rights. Because technology has become a part of most people’s daily lives, one could maybe predict the machines would begin to possess the same rights as humans. In that case, the legal implications here would be the ownership of people, which would more than likely become non-existent. I think the only reliable issue here is environmental. Disposal would be a factor as well as energy. As we become a more energy-conscious society, the robots would have to be energy efficient and pose little threat to the environment.