Smart Product-Service Systems

Topic Briefing

The rapid development of information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence and digital technologies have largely empowered today’s industries towards the so-called digital servitization era. Accordingly, a promising IT-driven business paradigm, i.e. Smart Product-Service Systems (Smart PSS) was brought up, of which a large amount of low cost, high performance smart, connected products are leveraged, together with their generated on-demand services, as a single solution bundle to meet individual customer needs.

Smart PSS reshapes the product-service design in several unique aspects, including a closed-loop forward and reverse design manner (Hybrid Design), design with integrated human-machine intelligence (Hybrid Intelligence), and context-aware value co-creation (Hybrid Value). In Smart PSS context, unlike conventional design process starts from the very beginning of lifecycle, design innovation can be regarded as a value generation process by considering the whole product-service lifecycle, including value co-creation at the early development stage, value implementation in the manufacturing process, and value recreation in the usage stage. It follows Design for X principles with extended lifecycle and sustainability concerns, while conducted in a smart, connected environment by embracing disruptive ICT and AI techniques.

Figure An overview of Smart PSS paradigm.

Project Funds

  • 03/2025 – 02/2027 ‘Develop a Vision-Language Model-based Smart Driving Assistant for Enhancing Safety and Convenience of Motorists’ (PSRI/93/2407/PR), Smart Traffic Fund, PI
  • 01/2023 – 12/2024 ‘Development of an Augmented Reality-Assisted Head-up Display (AR-HUD) mechanism for recommending driving strategy’ (PSRI/35/2202/PR), Smart Traffic Fund (STF), Transport Department & HKPC, HKSAR, China, PI (Co-I: Dr. Xiao Huang (COMP) and Dr. Chao Huang (ISE), HKPU)
  • 11/2022 – 10/2024 ‘工業智能產品服務系統設計方法研究’, 中國美術學院文創設計智造（Design-AI Lab）教育部哲學社會科學實驗室（培育）, PI
  • 09/2020 – 08/2024 ‘Big data analytics for product and service design’ (AiDLab-RP2-1), AIR@InnoHK Project by Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC), Co-PI
  • 01/2021 – 12/2023 ‘Research on key methodologies for user-oriented industrial smart product-service systems‘ (No. 52005424), by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), 240,000 CNY, PI
  • 06/2020 – 06/2022 ‘Joint research and development of key technology of intelligent design of cutting machine’ (BZ2020049), by Jiangsu Science and Technology Plan (Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan Joint Programme), 200,000 CNY (Total amount: 700,000 CNY), Hong Kong PI
  • 10/2016 – 09/2020 ‘Stakeholder-Oriented Innovative User-Centric Design and Solution Generation’ (Ref. RCA-16/434), National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore , S$817,500 (Industrial Partner: Delta Electronics International (Singapore) Pte Ltd.), Researcher

Project Demo

i-BRE Smart Wearble Mask

RAIDS Smart Office PSS

Smart Human-Vehicle Interaction