title: Promoting Innovation in Homelessness and Mental Health Service Design: An Adaptation of the Trajectory Touchpoint Technique
Creators: name: Spence, Chloe
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2024

description: Across much of service research, there has been increasing attention granted to consumer wellbeing as a key outcome of value cocreation, with the potential to extend far beyond the duration of a service experience. Such meaningful long-term change is denoted by the 
concept of transformative value, developed within the wellbeing-oriented field of transformative service research (TSR). Researchers within TSR have drawn attention to the importance of both service design and broader service networks. Conversely, important gaps 
remain regarding integration of resources across multilevel domains, including the role of customer networks and how transformative value creation relates to therapeutic resource availability. Furthermore, there remains a shortage of TSR on meso-level factors shaping vulnerability emergence and alleviation, understanding of which appears necessary to address 
the research priority of serving marginalised consumers. 

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the constituents of transformative service in a context of multiple marginalisation. This is explored via the construct of transformative value in the experience (T-VALEX), synthesising and building upon extant concepts of transformative value and value in the experience (VALEX). Research consists of a case study within a 
charitable organisation, collecting qualitative data from three residential services targeting marginalised clients. Main stages of data collection comprise unstructured interviews and application of the adapted Trajectory Touchpoint Technique (TTT), a service design 
methodology using rich pictures to elicit consumer narratives. 

Client narratives deliver qualitative insight into the cocreation of T-VALEX, highlighting key elements and processes across multilevel domains. Therapeutic resource integration is situated within this context, with novel findings regarding availability of these resources within servicescapes, across networks, and in relation to transformative wellbeing outcomes. Accounts of vulnerability emergence and alleviation illustrate the impacts of meso-level forces, which appear largely interrelated with processes of T-VALEX creation in contexts of marginalisation. Observations and explicit participant feedback regarding the utility of the adapted TTT are also presented and discussed, assessing the effectiveness of this technique within the research context. 

Findings contribute towards understanding of TSR and transformative service design in a number of ways. The construct of T-VALEX is conceptualised as embedded in a multilevel value configuration space with facilitators emerging and interacting across the different levels, enhancing understanding of how and when value creation produces profound and holistic change. An extended conceptualisation of therapeutic resources is developed and also linked to T-VALEX creation. Additional frameworks are proposed regarding vulnerability emergence and alleviation, addressing the underexplored potential for meso-level forces to 
mediate the relationship between marginalised group membership and actual vulnerability perceptions. Methodological contributions arise out of insights into narrative elicitation and service design techniques, while contributions to practice include specific opportunities for innovation alongside broader implications for practitioners.