Third International Service Design - Northumbria University 2 nd -3 rd April 2008

1. Third International Service Design - Northumbria University 2nd-3rd April 2008 Designing for ‘Real People’ Research into Emerging Methods and Practices

2. Professor Robert Young Third International Service Design - Northumbria University 2nd-3rd April 2008 Welcome and Introduction

3. Over the last two years, the ISDN series of events has formed an exciting platform to explore the emerging field of Service Design. The very first ISDN, in March 2006, looked at Service Designers - who were these people and what were they doing? ISDN2 followed in November 2006, and explored the relationship(s) that Service Design, as a design sub-discipline, might have with business. ISDN3 will investigate broader issues that contemporary designers face, with special focus on how designers are addressing the complex situations that arise when designing with what John Thackara of Dott 07 calls 'real people' - as opposed to 'users' - in the design process. For our workshop we've invited some doctoral researchers to share reflections on their recent design research work, and we're structuring the event to maximise productive debate about the key issues arising when designing in this way. INTRODUCTION AND CONTENTS

4. The broader purpose of NU concerns the nature of design practice to support the role of design in society A focal interest is the development of appropriate descriptions of service design content and process to improve the designer’s ability to navigate and contend with complex projects, including the relationship to people as subjects and objects of research Approach - is the perspective of the design practitioner and their sense making requirement for theory and knowledge to support design practice Research interest in the epistemology of design practice - including its relationship to real-world problems Relationship to other disciplines, their philosophy and method SETTING THE SCENE: BRIDGE BETWEEN ISDN1, 2 & 3

5. Service Innovation through Design Thinking - Prof Tim Brown, IDEO US Signposts for the Next Decade - Dr. Andrea Cooper, Design Council Pioneering Service Design - Chris Downs, Live|Work Objects of Service - From Subjects to Objects and Back Again - Prof. Steven Kyffin, Philips Design Designing Design in a Complex World - Dr. Bob Young, School of Design, Northumbria University Better Services Happier Customers - Oliver King The Engine Group Redesigning Public Services - Jennie Winhall RED at the Design Council Designers! Who Do You Think You Are? - Kamil Michlewski of Northumbria University Subject and some content has since been repeated in: Carnegie Melon - Emergence Conference Sept 2006 CIID - Service Design Symposium March 2008 KEYNOTE CONTENT IN ISDn1

6. Designing with people not for people Designing with multi-disciplined teams Learning to listen before acting Service Design needs a sophisticated multi-dimensional model of content and context issues not just design process elements Design students are becoming concerned more about issues to be addressed by design rather than learning the skills of a traditional design discipline If product design requires a developed sense of seeing manifested through the act of sketching, then service design requires a developed sense of listening manifested through the act of storytelling. WHAT IS SERVICE DESIGN - ISSUES EMERGING FROM ISDn1

7. Dott's community projects: Urban Farming, Low Carb Lane, MoveMe, OurNewSchool, New Work,Alzheimer100 and DaSH (Design and Sexual Health) Dott Festival closing presentation by Prof. Ezio Mancini: Dott projects are a vital example of design with communities - constructing community engagement - rather than design for constructing new products. Two of the six projects were concerned with social inclusion - health and wellbeing issues rather than sustainability issues. The main legacy of the projects was the transforming effect that engagement in the design process had on the lives and attitudes of community participants. DEVELOPMENTS BETWEEN ISDn1 & ISDn3 - DOTT 07

8. New doctoral projects established: Northumbria Studentship - investigating the relationship between service touch-points and the way they are experienced and portrayed, which is now focusing on the design of ‘edge services’ Northumbria / Design Council co-sponsored Studentship - investigating the emerging design methods and process employed in the Dott 07 Public Commission projects Subsequent Northumbria Studentship investigating the - capacity of transformation service design to move beyond social science methods in support of communities of craft practice in rural India. DEVELOPMENTS BETWEEN ISDn1 & ISDn3 - PHD STUDIES

9. QUESTIONS ADDRESSED AT ISDn2 • How can services be prototyped? (from both demand- and supply-side perspectives). • What kind of data is useful to the designers of a service, and other stakeholders in the service, during the design process? • What criteria are used to define a service as successfully designed? (i.e. profit-turning, easy to use & quality of user experiences, ecologically sustainable etc.)  • What methods - visual or verbal - or conceptual are available to help articulate complex systems? • Plenary • In what ways do the design of public and private sector services differ? • What influences the perception of risk amongst public and private sector service design sponsors?

10. Final workshop presentation in Oct 2007 Discussion of Service Design from the perspective of design method and theory. Follows arguments made by Hugentobler and Jones Jones view of design methods: “The purpose of a design process … to provide an adequate way of listening to the users and to the world.” His view of Rightness of content, process and context issues SAID OXFORD SERVICE DESIGN PROJECT

11. “..design is a meta-process occurring before the product exists that can predict enough about the future to ensure that the design can have the same quality of rightness that we see in natural organisms.” Is this an appropriate analogy for service design? Jones was one of the first design researchers to model different levels of design complexity beyond components and products to encompass systems and communities. He also exhorted designers to be more aware of the impact of their work on society at a systemic level. Jones, identified the need to appreciate products by understanding their whole. He talked about the social, economic and political basis of the existence of a single product in order to address human needs. He recognised a need for change as a result of the increased complexity of new products brought about by technological developments. JONES’ VIEW OF ‘RIGHTNESS’

12. Criticism of ‘artefact-centred’ approach Rather than ‘human centred’ Or ‘eco-centred’ Criticism of design that is too ‘business centred‘- palpable tension between human-centred service design thinking and business centred strategic management consultancy at SAID Criticism of design which focuses on self-centredness - expression of self is advanced instead of an approach based upon responsible service for a communal good rather than self gratification - referred to as ‘author-centredness’ (Hugentobler 2004). CRITICISM OF CENTRIC APPROACHES

13. Question; is there anatural leanof business to private sector business contexts and that of design to public sector service? Conspicuous consumptionin service of product and artefact creation in the world of global business as opposed toinconspicuous consumptionin the context of service transformation in the world of public sector services - polarises the debate. PROCLIVITY OF THE DISCIPLINES

14. What we can learn from public service explorations that include diverse communities of interest, e.g.: Dott? Can service design methods connect inconspicuous consumption and people to policy. Are ‘edge services’ particularly instructive? Are there limits to the application of service design approaches and methods? Can transformation service design methods go beyond the utility of methods from other disciplines to effect policy into practice, data into better qualities of experiences for real people in real-world contexts. OTHER QUESTIONS FOR SERVICE DESIGN PRACTICE

15. Methods may support conceptual idea development but they do not provide the tools and techniques that we need to analyse complex service ecologies or for developing more human-centred solutions and dealing with multidisciplinary design situations (Hugentobler 2004). Service Design as a field of practice is ill defined - the rigour of good service design method and process has not yet been identified (Jonathan Ive, 2007) RIGOUR IN SERVICE DESIGN PRACTICE?

16. Design research asks; how do we make the shift from designers as executants to designers as executives in the context of designing services? Hugentobler’s prognosis is that this cannot be done without the introduction of systems thinking More recent work points to the need to consider the hybridisation of design methods and social science methods In the world of designing, reasoning might catch up with conceptualisation, meanwhile service design practice continues to happen, - or not! HOW DO WE GET RIGOUR IN SERVICE DESIGN PRACTICE?

17. KEYNOTE – ANNA MERONI ‘Approaches to and reflections on sustainable social innovation and service design’