Conference article

This working paper reflects on an inquiry into a current service design practice, by sharing insights into the changing role of service designers and by outlining implications for service design education. It is based on ethnographic research with a public-sector service design agency. Observations suggest that service designers become increasingly concerned with and integrated into the organizational context that they try to change. This paper then firstly gives a real-world example of the deep integration of service designers in a client organization, a council, it continues by describing the interactions and relationships that service designers have with this organization and then identifies potential for research and education by discussing these findings in relation to service design education using the example of product and service design courses at the Glasgow School of Art and discourses from literature.

service design, service design education