In the past decades, there has been a transition from an inside-out focus on product-orientation and optimisation to an outside-in approach; centred on understanding why customers make use of a particular solution and aimed at serving them the best way possible. That is why for organisations, service design has grown in importance and has become a crucial capability to stay relevant in this service- and experience-dominant economy.
Service design is all about the design of these services, inherently looking at the customer's experience, and enabling organisations to deliver. By combining the service's frontstage and backstage, service design offers a holistic view of the organisation's interactions and their unique contexts, processes, systems, metrics, people, and tools involved. This process ensures cohesiveness and enables engagement with the organisation over time. Hence, service design increases the capacity to improve not only service experiences but also organisational design.
The course focuses on services as ecosystems for value generation in which value is co-created by all actors and stakeholders involved, not only customer-facing staff and customers but also other organisations who serve the customer as well. The course takes a systems approach to the design of services, looking at the relationships between individual elements and at the service as a whole. To help you gain this all-encompassing perspective, fields like social science, organisational design/design operations and business design are included in different lessons throughout the course.
Students will combine theory with practice during the course, including exercises and a real-world case.
You will follow a series of lessons bundled in 8 chapters; one chapter per week. Each Monday, the lessons for that week are unlocked. Study the content, watch the videos, and do the exercises at your own pace. Because you start at the same time as your fellow participants, you will be able to discuss, exchange feedback, and work on exercises together. Learning with and from your peers is one of the guiding principles of our courses.
You also will work in small groups on a unique brief set with a client, an organisation that introduces you to a real-world case; their challenge to be solved. You will be guided by a team of seasoned design experts from fields like social design, design research, experience design, and of course, service design.
In addition to the study materials, you are able to book 1:1 video calls with a tutor of your choice. How long and how many times, that’s up to you; select your tutor, look at the availability, and book a time slot by paying the tutor fee. All lessons are online, and live sessions will take place via Zoom.
This course is worth 40 SDC study points. You will receive a certificate of completion.
Service design, business design, strategic design, futures thinking, systems thinking
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Júlia Fort Muñoz (Spain) is an experienced design researcher and leader focused on driving product and business decisions. Currently in a journey of making human-centred insights influential and impactful at the Swiss scale-up Smallpdf.
Anna Kirah (Norway) is a design anthropologist and psychologist, internationally known for her pioneering methods within people-centred innovation and, currently, Assistant Professor at Kristiania University College.
Bassam Jabry (UK) is a seasoned designer, systems thinker, and managing director of Chemistry, an independent strategic design consultancy, that helps organisations deliver human-centred solutions that drive positive change.
Noortje Küppers (The Netherlands) is a service design consultant at Livework studio, where she focuses on bridging urban design and service design. Her key driver is to design for wellbeing and a sustainable future.
Majid Iqbal (India) is advisor, teacher and founder of Structural, a stealth startup building a platform for designing contracts and agreements, based on an expansive library of building blocks.
Maja Grakalić (Croatia) is an independent foresight strategist, service designer and PhD candidate at Central Saint Martins in London. Her work merges strategic foresight with the human-centred collaborative approach.
Diane Seaver (United States) is a Senior Service Design and Experience Lead at Philips working on service innovation projects specialising in business model innovation and go-to-market implementation.
Ariel Guersenzvaig (Argentina) teaches and writes about the philosophy and ethics of design and technology. He is professor of design theory at ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, where he also heads the MA in User Experience.
Itziar Pobes (Spain) is strategic designer and researcher, specialised in service design and innovation with 20+ years of experience in interdisciplinary design, creativity, design research and cultural studies.
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