GOING STEADY INTIMATE DISCOURSE WITH SERVICE DESIGN STUDENTS AT SCAD
FALL 2016
Š 2016 Savannah College of Art and Design All work that is not ours is attributed to the creator. Going Steady—Intimate Discourse with Service Design at SCAD is the official process book of Service Design Senior Studio (SERV 431) and was created entirely by the students enrolled in this course along with current students & alumni who participated in our SMS probe and/or in depth interview. Its editorial content does not necessarily reflect the views of the Savannah College of Art and Design. It was produced in the Fall Quarter of 2016 and covers a period of September through November. Typefaces Lust Display, designed in 2012 by Neil Summerour. Proxima Nova Regular, Proxima Nova Semibold, Proxima Nova Bold, respectively were used. Proxima Nova was designed in 2005 by Mark Simonson. Book layout and interior illustrations were designed by Polly Adams, Paige Roche & Oscar Elmendorf. Photos within this book were taken by Jose Bertero & Oscar Elmendorf at the SCAD Gulfstream Center for Design, the SCAD Jen Library, and a National Historic Landmark Kiah Hall in Savannah, Georgia during the Fall Quarter of 2016 Thank you to our professor, Mauricio Manhaes for guiding us throughout this entire process, for his knowledge, and for his candid advice. Also our fellow students for their inspiration and support during this journey and for taking our endless surveys and interviews. We would like to extend a special thank you to Service Design Professors Xenia Viladas and Louis Baker, whom we thank for their time, guidance and valuable feedback. Design Team Polly Adams Paige Roche Oscar Elmendorf Jose Mario Bertero Project Advisor Mauricio Manhaes, Ph.D. SCAD Professor of Service Design
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Having over 100 students enrolled in a program at SCAD brings major advantages such as providing additional resources for students and funding to help professors optimize the student experience. The Service Design department at SCAD is small, and the only one of it’s kind in the United States. The unique opportunity to be trained in this emerging field should be exciting, but, instead leaves some prospective students apprehensive due to vague descriptions and the exclusive allure of Service Design. Service Design can be complicated to explain and mean different things to different people, but it shouldn’t feel unapproachable. After experiencing and overcoming this apprehension first hand, the senior class of Fall 2016 wanted to discover how to reach out to students who may flourish in the Service Design department. Our senior studio class became focused on how we could attract more students in order to augment the future success of the program, and it quickly became clear that in order to grow our department we would need to understand and showcase the culture of Service Design students to make our field of study seem more accessible. The scope of our project involved researching enrolled students in the program (BFA, MFA,), alumni, professors, and industry professionals adjacent to our school to deeply understand what makes them successful designers and inspired them to pursuit an emerging discipline in order to help others do so as well. We used qualitative and quantitative research methods to discover how the department saw itself as well as how others saw the department. Our goal is to allow students unbeknownst of the program a chance to join like minded individuals in an educational program that fits them.
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Choosing your field of study is like discovering a lifelong love. The journey starts with the First Encounter, which sparks interest and Infatuation. But getting to really know someone involves more Discovery of what lies beneath the surface, so that the Decision to commit is well informed from an intimate relationship.
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6 10 18 32 38 50 First Encounter Service Designers are curious creatures, and we find value in everything we seek out and happen to stumble upon... like our majors.
Infatuation Once we find something shiny and new, we’re enchanted and intrigued to learn more, and enjoy the first flirtations...
Discovery
Diving deeper allows us the chance to get the bigger picture, and a more meaningful understanding, for better or for worse...
Decision
When we’re faced with the big picture, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, and determining next steps can feel like standing at a fork in the road with endless paths to chose from...
Synthesis
The culmination of our exploration results in the union of our hopes, dreams, and experiences of our journey to feel like we’re moving in the right direction...
Process
The method behind our madness, displaying each method of research we conducted to intimately know our Service Design students.
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First Encounter You’re in a new place, on your own, and ready to try something new…
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So you’ve arrived at SCAD. The school you’ve chosen to call home for the next four years. There are a plethora of new experiences before you. You’re going to meet a lot of new people. Some of them will become lifelong friends, and others...not so much. You may have come to SCAD knowing exactly what you wanted to study, but you’ll likely change your mind a few times once you get to learn about majors you didn’t even know existed. In the School of Design at SCAD, your personal journey of discovery will begin with meeting people from every continent, nationality, and background. You’ll have classes with graduate students from several different programs, you’ll be in clubs with experienced industrial designers who have had careers before returning to school, and you’ll learn from professional speakers from various industries. You’ll be immersed in a culturally vibrant environment that will open your eyes to new perspectives, learning about emerging industry practices, and begin diving into the different topics you could study. You’re already a designer. Walking into Gulfstream opens the door to being a professional one, and you’re not here to play by the rules or become someone you’re not. You are here to design your education. We (Service Design students) are here to show you what it’s like to follow our footsteps, and the opportunity beyond.
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So, what is Service Design, anyways?
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Service Design choreographs processes, technologies, and interactions within complex systems in order to co-create value for relevant stakeholders.
Birgit Mager
Professor of Service Design, KISD SDN President 08
This is a question that every single person associated with the Service Design program at SCAD has encountered (and most likely fumbled with) at one point or another. It’s also a question that is still being asked across multiple design industries across the globe. Service Design is still an emerging field, trying to differentiate itself in the company of many other disciplines with similar work practices and mindsets in the modern shift towards human-centered design. Service Design students, professionals, and professors have a personal understanding of the discipline and how they wish to apply it in their work. Service Designers see themselves and the world around them as transformative, diverse, and multifaceted. Therefore, it’s pretty difficult to get a straight answer out of any of our students, and that doesn’t tend to look very good to prospective ones who are flirting with other design disciplines as well. However, there is a sort of stigma surrounding Service Design students– an air of mystery, a stereotype that simply describes service design majors as “smart” or “highly organized.” It is what draws us in, and keeps us interested in learning more. The infatuation phase with any new subject offers a chance to pull back stereotypes, check the validity of what caught your eye, and see if it’s worth some more of your time.
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The Service Design Student Servicius Designos Studiosous.
A rare species that flocks to the Southeastern United States for 9 months out of the calendar year to cohabitate and collaborate with each other and other design students. Perseverance and dedication to becoming multi-disciplinary have made them highly organized, systematic, and incredibly creative and collected in the face of diversity. These rare students enable their practice with four key material work practices that they use to complete projects, and values that define each hard skill as distinctly their own. Service Design students at SCAD draw from many different sources and disciplines to craft solutions and foster a deeper understanding of the industry they are working within. In order to establish progress in industries such as healthcare, transportation, education, and retail, we must be driven to fully grasp the realms we choose to design for, connect with the users, take advantage of our broad and varying perspectives to create the best work we can in order to promote and contribute to institutional change. After diving into the minds of the student body, we found that when students take their first few classes in Service Design, they seem to be much more driven to continue studying than when they first start. They begin to see the big picture, and see how each individual brushstroke, line, and shadow, contributes to the composition itself.
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Service Design students cite research, problem solving, prototyping, and visualization as the top 4 hard skills or material practices used in their discipline. These four practices are intrinsically entwined with a set of 4 values that define them as distinctly useful when differentiating Service Design from other similar disciplines. The 4 values that define the Service Design department at SCAD and serve as the foundation for these practices in action are curiosity, empathy, innovation, and collaboration. Practices without being driven by a value are void of meaning, while values without practice are simply good intentions. Values serve as the foundation for these material practices, feeding them from the ground up. The Service Design student learns practices and methods early on, but learns how to define them through real-world projects that teach us to curiously explore new landscapes, use empathy to truly understand them, collaborate with other designers, and create innovative solutions that work for real people.
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a
1. Research 2. Visualization 3. Prototyping 4. Problem Solving 3 Material Practices 4
These are the hard skills and elements of our design work that we use to craft solutions. These hard skills are found in many other disciplines as well, used in different ways. From a poll of 45 current Service Design students we found the top four material practices used in their work to be research, prototyping, problem solving, and visual design.
Values
Values are crucial in defining a disciplines character and essence of an emerging discipline, in the sense that each material practice, while drawn from an other disciplines, can be defined by a core moral standard that differentiates it from similar uses. Values without action are but empty words; while practices without a sense of mission or meaning can be reproduced by anyone. The same poll that revealed the top material practices defined the top four values Service Design students at SCAD use in their practices as curiosity, empathy, collaboration, and innovation.
d b
c
a. Curiousity b. Innovation c. Collaboration d. Empathy
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SCAD School of Design There are a variety of professional programs in the School of Design: Over 800 students are enrolled in Industrial Design, Design for Sustainability, User Experience, Service Design, Furniture Design, Design Management, and Business Design and Arts Leadership.
Did you know Students thatabout knewService about Design before coming Service Design prior to to SCAD? SCAD
Out of
800 Students
yes no
95.5%
81
4.5%
How students first heard about Service Design?
Study Service Design
Major
51%
40
Minor
18 16
Masters Double Major
7 100
50
0
Academic Academic year yearstudents studentsdeclare major in Service delcared ServiceDesign Design major 24%
32%
Of students minoring in Service Design major in Industrial Design
Popular minors that Service Designers explore
44%
Interaction
22% Sustainability
22% Freshman
Sophmore
Junior
Business
18%
9%
13%
Photography
12
Industrial
12%
20%
SCAD Resources
Teacher
8%
24%
Major/Minors Fair
Other
(website, myscad, job portal)
36%
Friend
Service Design Student Demographics
Students in our program come from all over the world
California Washington Missouri Pennsylvania Louisiana Colorado Florida Massachusetts Rhode Island Texas Hawaii
Bolivia Colombia Brazil Costa Rica Guatemala Colombia
India Taiwan China Hong Kong Germany Italy
Diversity In our Service Design department we have students that range from over nine different countries that includes Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Germany, Hong Kong, the United States, India, and Taiwan. As Service Designers, we are actively changing the world through innovation and human-centered design which involves a variety of expertise, intellectual perspective, values, and interests to be shared. In order to establish progress in industries such as healthcare, transportation, education, and retail we must begin with understanding who we are specifically designing for. We have the opportunity to learn from the diverse group of people with various cultures, backgrounds, and ethnicities. Diversity flourishes in our department, enriches our ability to embrace change, and unites us as individuals.
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The Infatuation First flirtations with any design discipline are always alluring...
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You are wooed by perfect finishes and smooth lines, modern ideas and minimalist undertones…. it’s evident that someone has carefully crafted an infographic, kitchen table, or mobile application not only to get its job done, but to do it with style. Prospective Service Design students see the appeal of complex-looking wallcharts, large visualizations of working systems, sharply dressed alumni, and the excitement of being able to help define an industry that’s been growing for decades that is ripe for the picking.
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I just wanted to learn more about how to really understand the world around me. Service Design Senior, 21
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We live for what killed the cat. Curiosity Curiosity may have killed the cat but, ironically it is what keeps Service Designers breathing. It is what pushes us to dig deeper and discover uncharted territory, navigate complex systems, and get to the bottom of underlying problems. Examining new routes and approaching the problem from a new angle can only be possible if curiosity is present. The most skilled service designer will always be the most inquisitive.
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Wanna talk about it? Curiosity Asking questions comes as second nature to a Service Designer. Observing our surroundings and trying to understand them is common even when not working. As Service Designers we crave knowledge, and for good reason, considering it is our job. We ask our clients about every aspect of their business so we can fully comprehend it. Curiosity it is the fuel of development. That’s why it is a vital tool when it comes to solving never before seen problems. We want to get to the bottom of every mystery, find ourselves constantly asking questions and trying to shed light on darkness.
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Not all of us are extroverts, but we all know how to listen, and we want to. Service Design Grad Student, 27
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The Discovery Diving deeper allows us the chance to see the big picture and gain a more meaningful understanding, for better or for worse...
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Once Service Design students start taking classes in their major, they begin to put all the pieces together. The small department has three main professors that lead classes in basic service blueprinting and mapping, business design and understanding, and a more theoretical and academic perspective on Service Design as a discipline and a practice. Majority of Service Design students come from other majors initially, or enjoy taking electives in other majors within the School of Design, but get their foundation for seeing the world holistically and empathetically from three individuals who went through a similar process themselves. The professors, it turns out, are not that different from us, as they seem to have stumbled upon Service Design as it began to develop, and immersed themselves completely in learning how to apply it to their existing knowledge and skills. It’s their background that brings a wide variety of lessons to be learned, and their desire to learn and define an emerging field alongside the students that makes classes in the program worthwhile.
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Xenia Viladas The Boss Lady
MBA and Business Design Aficionada
Xenia Viladas has been a professor of Service Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design since 2014. She is an economist and MBA by training, who has developed most of her career in Barcelona, Spain, where she belongs. She started her professional activity in the textile industry and later transitioned to the design sector, in which she focused on the Design Management field. All along this time, she would help close the gap between companies and designers by researching and teaching on the value of design, as well as by implementing good practices. In 2006, she established her own consultancy specializing in small design organizations, helping them find their strategic drive and improve their management skills. Her first encounter with Service Design was in 2010 while attending a Design Management Institute conference. She would then devote herself to learning and promoting Service Design, especially among designers since they too are providers of services. Xenia would then further persevere her learning of Service Design in the best possible manner, by teaching it at SCAD. When asked what persuaded her to switch fields, she responded with “intellectual curiosity�, a trait she believes is shared by all future and present Service Designers.
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Service Design is about making sense of complex systems and design solutions to improve user satisfaction while helping the service provider achieve their strategic goals. 23
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Our goal as Service Designers is to optimize as well as transform: I think we help companies look towards the future with new and innovative services so that they stay relevant.
Louis Baker
The Facilitator
Service Design foundations and Graphic Guru Born, raised, and currently working in Savannaht Louis Baker began his relationship with the Savannah College of Art and Design in the late 1980’s. He formally majored in graphic design and would then move onto teaching it for 23 years. Four years ago while participating in a SCAD conference, the opportunity to expand his knowledge into the world of Service Design presented itself. Thanks to his past experiences working with clients, and his particular set of skills, his understanding proved to be highly applicable in the emerging field. Baker believes all Service Designers share a certain comfort with ambiguity, and he says that not knowing all the answers is something Service Designers deal with on a daily basis. Now more seasoned in the field than ever, Baker wishes to expand his horizons into a more research driven area of Service Design. He says that customers may think they know what the problem or solution might be, but a Service Designer, conducting proper research can help to re-frame the solution. This means that much of Service Design consists of being a people-person and interacting with people from all design disciplines.
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Mauricio Manhaes The Philosopher
Knowledge Management, Ph.D. and Service Design Conceptual Expert
Mauricio Manhaes realized early in his career that something was missing in the design process. He felt frustrated that designers couldn’t communicate with customers through any other means than just the product, which proved difficult at times. He felt that no one considered the customer’s perspective back then. He was very intrigued when websites and their more friendly interfaces started to appear. Around 2006 he began to research these methods and knew that interface design and interaction design were not enough. He wanted something that prioritized the user above anything else. In 2008 he decided Service Design was what he wanted to pursue and he got in communication with professor Birgit Mager, the first academic professor of Service Design in the world. Mauricio was the first to receive an official contract that mentioned Service Design in Brazil. As he worked both him and his customers were overwhelmed by this technique which allowed for such emotional understanding. He believes business is unusual and that service designers are always in the forefront, nothing is settled. We are a community of crazy people living on the edge: constantly asking “whats next?” Mauricio says “Its awesome to have an industry to play this game for ever-- let’s think about something different! something new!”
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“
Service Design is the process of coordinating designed institutions and institutional arrangements to enable the co-creation of value, courtesy of Vargo and Lusch.
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Come Together.
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Service Design students coming from other backgrounds, or even straight out of high school and their foundation year at SCAD, have to learn early on under the stewardship of our professors that working in teams is not only necessary in this line of work, but can also be extremely rewarding. Most say the first and hardest lesson they’ve learned in the department is finding value working in teams, and how to present to stakeholders and professors. Your first few classes as a Service Design student will be daunting, but remember that you’ve just entered a small community, and you are definitely not alone. It can be difficult at first to make many voices sound united as one, but we’re generally of the philosophy that when there’s a will, there’s a way. We hit the ground running, and we finish the race together.
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Teamwork makes the dream work. Collaboration Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it certainly wasn’t built by one person. As Service Designers, we solve complex problems to improve the overall quality of life. While solving these problems can be challenging at times, we find it easier to unite and collaborate among one another. In order to establish progress in unfamiliar landscapes, we need varying perspectives from different individuals to drive teamwork in the right direction and create meaningful solutions.
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“
It’s really nice to get close with teammates, but the best friends I’ve made have been through figuring out how to work through problems with them at first. Service Design Grad Student, 25
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It’s about knowing who you’re working with, and knowing how to get them to work. Service Design Senior, 21
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We don’t play cards, we deal them. Collaboration
At SCAD, Service Designers have ten short weeks in each quarter to ideate, collaborate, and design meaningful products or services. In order to successfully execute our work, we divide and conquer tasks. Teamwork is the only way for high quality work to be executed, as it is nearly impossible to successfully do the work we do alone. Learning how to find each member’s strongest skills is table stakes to play, but efficiently managing a team is what helps you win the game.
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The Decision Any relationship worth investing in usually involves some passionate argument.
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Aside from the overall SCAD demands and expectations, a Service Designer often feels overwhelmed, stressed out, and exhausted on deeper levels than one imagined. As a Service Designer you have a diverse set of skills that you are constantly transforming. We’re required to perform extensive research, visualize and design data, strategize, analyze, theorize and conceptualize. It is common for a Service Design student to find it difficult to shift from a conceptual to theoretical framework but that is exactly where the magic happens. We have the possibility to launch a new and exciting career in a world that has just begun to become tapped into.
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We feel you.
Empathy Service Designers live, sleep, and breath their work and values. Every experience we craft is born from an empathetic perspective-- we don’t move forward without truly knowing what it’s like to walk a mile in our user’s shoes. We know that they’re shoes aren’t always comfortable, and we feel like we’ve been walking for miles too. We want our users to keep walking, and that’s why we’re designing with “sole”.
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“
You can just walk through the hallways, and know what we’re all going through. People in Gulf just get it, and get each other. Service Design Junior, 20
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It’s the most frustrating thing in the world to be lied to. Truth is the only way we get anything done, and it’s taught me to be more honest. Service Design Minor Student, 19
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We can handle the truth. Empathy Service Designers need to truly understand a situation or complex system in order to design within it. Authenticity in empathizing with others is crucial to creating a truly useful and delightful solution. We Wdo the best work we can by not only seeking the truth, but embracing it to promote change and transform the good, the bad, and the ugly into the desirable.
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The Synthesis Once you pass frustration and learn from failure, you begin to feel like you’ve found the one thing you can grow with for the rest of your life.
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Long term commitment usually comes after some hard work and dedication. Students spend a few years putting blood (x-acto knives are sharp!), sweat (Savannah is in the coastal South, y’all), and tears (designers have feelings too) into their degrees at SCAD. We spend long nights lurking the halls of Gulfstream yawning in solidarity with our cohorts, chanting “Sleep Comes After Death”, because we are committed to doing the best work that we can. Service Designers champion themselves for reading the longest articles (courtesy of Maurico Manhaes), wrapping their heads around the design of business (dreams crushed and validated by Xenia Viladas), and sharpening professional visual design skills (with help from our graphic guru, Louis Baker). After long nights, navigating perplexing concepts, and trying to become multidisciplinary designers ready for the “real world”, some resurface disillusioned- what was all the hard work for? When we interview with different companies, we realize that sometimes we have to do some explaining… “What is Service Design, anyways?”. Luckily, if we all get one thing from this degree and time at SCAD, it’s how to present ourselves with our own definition, and convey our worth to co-create valuable, innovative solutions in any landscape.
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F%!k the formula. Innovation Service Design students do work in a wide variety of fields, from marketing, business, design management, to industrial design, UX, interaction design, and ethnography. In a sense they are a jack of all trades‌ and masters of all of them (but they know when to let experienced experts take over). Service Designers understand that there is no magic formula. Every problem, every project, every brief is different. The magic happens through how they employ the right knowledge in the right opportunity spaces.
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Everyone thinks that there’s a certain way to get things done, a design process or methodology that is the only right way... but it’s just not true. Service Design Grad Student, 27
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I feel like I never stop. But at the end of the quarter, it’s always worth it. Service Design Senior, 20
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Work, work, work, work, work. Innovation
It’s Monday. You’ve been given a design brief: End world hunger…..by Friday. Most designers couldn’t rise to the occasion. Service Designers like to stay busy and work hard, in fact it’s almost written into their DNA. They don’t shy away from wicked problems. They are okay with ambiguity (even prefer it). There is no right or wrong. The resources are out there waiting to be connected and activated. Everything can be “solved.”... The truth is out there and these students are driven to find it.
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Conclusion The culmination of our research resulted in 8 insights about our Service Design students that thread the needle through our initial understandings, our survey results, and the findings from our in-depth interviews and digital cultural probe. Each insight we crafted is displayed throughout this report, and is connected to one of the values our students found curcial to defining their work practices.
Curiosity
Collaboration
Wanna talk about it?
Teamwork makes the dream work.
Asking questions comes as second nature to a Service Designer. Observing our surroundings and trying to understanding them is common even when not working. As Service Designers we crave knowledge and for good reason, considering it is our job. We ask our clients about every aspect of their business so we can fully comprehend it. Curiosity it is the fuel of development. That’s why it is a vital tool when it comes to solving never before seen problems. We want to get to the bottom of every mystery, find ourselves constantly asking questions and trying to shed light on darkness.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it certainly wasn’t built by one person. As Service Designers, we solve complex problems to improve the overall quality of life. While solving these problems can be challenging at times, we find it easier to unite and collaborate among one another. In order to establish progress in unfamiliar landscapes, we need varying perspectives from different individuals to drive teamwork in the right direction and create meaningful solutions.
We live for what killed the cat.
We don’t play cards, we deal them.
Curiosity may have killed the cat but, ironically it is what keeps Service Designers breathing. It is what pushes us to dig deeper and discover uncharted territory, navigate complex systems, and get to the bottom of underlying problems. Examining new routes and approaching the problem from a new angle can only be possible if curiosity is present. The most skilled service designer will always be the most inquisitive.
At SCAD, Service Designers have ten short weeks in each quarter to ideate, collaborate, and design meaningful products or services. In order to successfully execute our work, we divide and conquer tasks. Teamwork is the only way for high quality work to be executed, as it is nearly impossible to successfully do the work we do alone. Learning how to find each member’s strongest skills is table stakes to play, but efficiently managing a team is what helps you win the game.
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Empathy
Innovation
We feel you.
F&%k the formula.
Service Designers live, sleep, and breath their work and values. Every experience we craft is born from an empathetic perspective-- we don’t move forward without truly knowing what it’s like to walk a mile in our user’s shoes. We know that they’re shoes aren’t always comfortable, and we feel like we’ve been walking for miles too. We want our users to keep walking, and that’s why we’re designing with “sole”.
Service Design students do work in a wide variety of fields, from marketing, business, design management, to industrial design, UX, interaction design, and ethnography. In a sense they are a jack of all trades… and masters of all of them (but they know when to let experienced experts take over). Service Designers understand that there is no magic formula. Every problem, every project, every brief is different. The magic happens through how they employ the right knowledge in the right opportunity spaces.
We can handle the truth.
Work, work, work, work, work.
Service Designers need to truly understand a situation or complex system in order to design within it. Authenticity in empathizing with others is crucial to creating a truly useful and delightful solution. We do the best work we can by not only seeking the truth, but embracing it to promote change and transform the good, the bad, and the ugly into the desirable.
It’s Monday. You’ve been given a design brief: End world hunger…..by Friday. Most designers couldn’t rise to the occasion. Service Designers like to stay busy and work hard, in fact it’s almost written into their DNA. They don’t shy away from wicked problems. They are okay with ambiguity (even prefer it). There is no right or wrong. The resources are out there waiting to be connected and activated. Everything can be “solved.”... The truth is out there and these students are driven to find it.
47
Welcome to the club. 48
Service Designers boldly navigate complex and unexplored territories to solve problems and define value, and every practice we use in our design work is shaped by values we hold ourselves to. What distinguishes Service Design students from others with similar hard skills and work practices is their aspiration to make sense of the world in surprising, delightful, and meaningful ways. Our work isn’t just a poster, product, or any single touchpoint in the experience- it’s understanding the entire system and enabling others to explore it as well. Our work becomes omnipresent, and theoretical, and vast-- but Service Designers are passionate about making new strides and augmenting innovative solutions for those who need them. If this sounds time consuming, that’s because it is-- but our practice becomes our lives. We’re artists at heart, and designers in practice. Our medium may not be something as tangible as paint, but we aim to embed each solution with meaning beyond the surface, and we dedicate ourselves to making these intangible concepts come to life. Group meetings can be challenging and may lead to some internal issues. Failure may happen and one must be okay with that. It is all apart of the creative process and learning development here at SCAD. A Service Designer must be flexible, cooperative, and devoted. Emphasis on the flexibility of roles. In group work, different people take on different roles and that will always be changing. You’ll need to find the balance between your personal and work life. Service Design alumni stress that “having variation is key.” As a designer, your outside world plays a large part to your inside world. You must make sure you are feeding both carefully. With SCAD being the only University in the United States that offers a BFA and MFA of Service Design, the demands and expectations are high. In order to get through it all, we need to embrace ambiguity in our discipline. Ultimately, we’re getting the opportunity to define something together. If this report made you curious to learn more, related with you, brought you close to other likeminded designers, or inspired your need to roll up your sleeves and begin crafting more, you may have found the right major. Go to https://www.scad.edu/academics/programs/servicedesign to learn more about the program and make sure to thank the person who handed this to you, because, regardless of your relationship, they saw potential in you to help change the world.
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Process
50
Who We Are
52
Timeline
54
Goals / Opportunity
56
Research Methods
58
How to Get Hired
66
Conclusion
68
51
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Oscar Elmendorf
Polly Adams
Jose Mario Bertero
Paige Roche
Senior Class Fall 2016 Oscar Elmendorf began his journey at SCAD in 2013 for Photography, however working freelance was not something he was down for. A very passionate Service Design student in his speech class forever changed his career path by introducing him into the department. He sees Service Design as the perfect blend of everything he wants to do in life. Oscar has accepted a position as a Strategic Innovation Designer.
Polly Adams came to SCAD in 2013 from Denver, CO originally to study Architecture. After realizing she wasn’t interested in spaces so much as the people that inhabited and shaped them, she began to explore elsewhere in the School of Design. After a brief affair with Industrial Design, Polly was exposed to the multidisciplinary and broad world of design thinking, and never looked back. She is headed to San Francisco to pursue Design Research.
Jose Mario Bertero is from the heart of South America, La Paz, Bolivia. He was first attracted to to the Savannah College of Art and Design because of Industrial Design. But before declaring his major he stumbled across Service Design which proved to be much more interesting. He appreciated its approach and its holistic view when it came to designing everything to maximize the user’s experience.
Paige Roche began her journey at SCAD in 2012. Her path towards Service Design inspired her to strategize and concept new ideas for social innovations globally, while participating in collaborative experiences throughout Southeast Asia, United Kingdom, and South America. Service Design has given her a glimpse in psychology, qualitative/quantitative research, business strategy, and design thinking on a holistic level.
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Timeline Held physical questionaire & recorded data
Discussed possible projects & set due dates
Week 1 Sept. 12 - 18
Week 2 Sept. 19 - 25
Initiated surveys (qualitative/ quantitative)
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Week 3 Sept. 26 - Oct. 2
Hurricane Week
Week 4 Oct. 3 - 9
SMS Cultural probe
Week 5 Oct. 10 - 16
Second draft of “Going Steady” turned in
data from research methods
Physical Presence
Week 6 Oct. 17 - 23
Began 1 week structured interviews
Week 7 Oct. 24 - 30
Week 8 Oct. 31 - Nov. 6
First draft “Going Steady” & published Article
Week 9 Nov. 7 - 13
Week 10 Nov. 14 - 20
Finalized process book
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Goals and Opportunity Service Design is still an emerging field, a topic that sparks discussion, and an academic study that many graduates at SCAD feel they have to justify in job interviews as well as to their friends and family. This can sometimes be frustrating, but also can be presented as an exciting opportunity for several reasons: Firstly, as the only undergraduate Service Design graduates in the United States, we are given the rare opportunity to help form the common understanding of our chosen discipline in the design world. We are the ambassadors of this emerging field, and are empowered to use the skills and values we gain from school in the setting we see fit. We also get to appear very smart at dinner parties and family gatherings when we say we “augment the potential to act� and enter the working world applying to a wide variety of jobs in many different industries that could benefit from design thinking skills learned at SCAD. However, we found that if you ask Service Designer students what separates Service Design from other design disciplines that many consider to be similar and encompassing of it as a niche, the responses start to shape an issue we were noticing from within the program: we had a common understanding of our field being holistic and evolving, but a hard time explaining it to fellow students invested in other fields of study. The confusion around the term was keeping prospective students from exploring it further, because it seemed to step too far from other defined disciplines they were comfortable with. This is particularly troubling as Service Design is still a small department, and in order to grow as a program, we need more students to continue to declare it as their major, rather than just a minor or using Service Design classes to fill electives. Out of the 800 students currently enrolled in a program in the School of Design at SCAD this Fall of 2016, 600 have declared their major in Industrial Design while 80 some-odd students are involved in the Service Design program. 40 of these are pursuing bachelor’s degrees, 26 are committed to the minor, and 16 are currently in the master of fine arts program. As four students out of the 40 undergraduates about to graduate, we took on the challenge of truly understanding the Service Design student population in order to find what drives and connects them. If the student population increases to 100 declared students in Service Design, the program will be enabled to provide more resources to their students (added funding, more professors to accommodate demand, visiting professionals, and multiply connections to the outside industry). In order to attract those who may be well-suited to a program they may not have otherwise heard of, comprehended, or sought it out on their own, we knew that the first step would be figuring out how the current student body arrived in the Service Design department in the first place.
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Research Methods
Surveys 58
Secondary
Digital Questionnaire
Our qualitative and quantitative research methods began with scoping our participants. We knew we were to begin with understanding the current potential services and benefits of service design students, professors, and alumni and how we could augment their potential to act of new students in regard to the Service Design department. During our research we constructed the “hidden agenda” we were trying to uncover: What makes Service Design students who they are? We wanted to discover meaningful stories that would relate back to why they chose Service Design and how we could then design a cultural profile of a Service Design student to attract undecided freshmen into the department. We started by using qualitative surveys with new students at the Fall Festival. This yearly event showcased all of the clubs at SCAD and allows new students to “find their tribe.” We took the opportunity to discover some of the motives of undecided freshman, as well as being testing aspects about their work process to see if their answers aligned with what we assumed would fit the “typical” Service Design student. These surveys were focused around what kind of thinkers, doers, and makers the students thought they were. The hidden agenda behind this particular survey given to undecided freshman was to see if we could link the data to the same survey that was then given to students currently enrolled in the Service Design department. After clustering and affinitizing data from the surveys on material practices and values, we began seeing patterns with our students at large. Narrowing in on the School of Design with the same surveys, allowing us to see the specific similarities and differences between Service Design and Industrial Design. The controlled variable for our cultural profile of Service Design students was research previously conducted on the values and material practices of the broader Service Design occupational field (Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky, 2016). The results of our research was that Service Design students at the Savannah College of Art and Design mirror, in part, that of the broader SD occupation. From here we zoomed in and administered subjective physical and digital questionnaires (designed with knowledge and insights gained from the previous surveys) to the students already enrolled in the Service Design program. Using the information and data collected from all three previous surveys we were able to create a cultural probe that we sent out to key Service Design students. The questions and the students were carefully chosen based on the previous research. With the seven questions from the cultural probes, audio, video, playlists, and a “cultural meme” were used to identify four students to have in-depth interviews with. The in-depth interviews were based on understanding the values and material practices learned previously during our surveying. All of this culminated into 8 final insights that we were able to use to tie together all of our research and connect to the underlying values we determined as intrinsically interconnected with the design process a Service Designer goes through.
Practices and Values Poll
SMS Probe
Interviews 59
Surveys
Do you prefer:
Being a lone wolf
1
2
...or
3
2
3
2
5
4
3
6
Ambiguity
5
...or
2
6
Article reading
4
3
Directions
1
5
...or
Clarity
1
4
...or
Buzzfeeding
1
Being a pack member
6
Discovery
4
5
6
In our initial research we realized, that, as Service Designers, we differ in ways that needed to be further analyzed. We initially formulated a short survey with questions focused on teamwork, ambition, and ambiguity based on our preconceived idea of a Service Design student. The ideal Do reading you prefer: student, we thought, would need to work in teams, enjoy regularly, and be comfortable with ambiguity. We crafted a survey that we thought may illustrate a pattern in recognizing Service Design students. The survey included several questions about these traits so the subjects could rate themselves on a scale from one to six to see if they aligned with our ideas, opposed them, or fell Being a lone wolf ...or Being a pack member somewhere in the middle. We first brought these questions to events with undecided freshmen to see if we could identify that might 1 potential candidates 2 3 be interested. 4 After receiving 5 a wide variety6 of results and a broad general interest in Service Design club events and in studying the major, we determined that perhaps we had assumed the “ideal� Service Design student was a particular type of person when really a wide variety of personality types are needed to work in successful teams. ...or Reading about it Drawing what you see
1
2
3
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2
3
2
3
6
Coaching
4
5
...or
Planning routes
1
5
...or
Cheerleading
1
4
6
Exploring
4
5
6
Digital Questionnaire In our investigation we translated our survey to a digital format that was sent to only students in the Service Design program. The results of our qualitative research showed us that these students did not particularly align in one area. We assumed that we would see patterns of more of an extroverted and ambitious personality types, but soon realized that no two designers seemed to feel exactly the same. The variety was divided among the scale with only one recognizable pattern: that those who identified themselves as interested in having clarity in a work environment were more prone to answer they preferred “self discovery” in a new city over getting directions (see results below). This pattern helped us see that “clarity” does not always necessarily mean “the opposite of ambiguity”, but could also be recognized as the act of organizing chaos. With this in mind, we saw that Service Designers appear to want to define their own rules in their work and other environments because they’re interested in truly understanding things from their own perspective. Our time getting to know our students a little bit better at the outright by getting their flat opinions, and being able to interpret them within the context of our research goals, allowed us to move to the next stage in our growing relationship-- understanding how they got to define themselves in the midst of it all…
Do you see yourself as more of a lone wolf or member of a pack?
Spend more time catching up on Buzzfeed or more formal newsites and article platforms like Medium?
12
8 7
10
6 5
8
4
6
3
4
2
2
60%
1 12
34
Lone Wolf
12
56 Wolf-Pack
When touring a new city, do you prefer directions or self discovery? 15
34
56
Buzzfeed
Articles
In a work environment, do you prefer clarity or ambiguity? 10
Undergraduate Major ( 17 ) Other ( 4 ) Minor ( 3 ) Graduate Major ( 2 ) Undergraduate, Double Major ( 2 )
12 9 6 3 12 Directions
34
56 Discovery
12 Clarity
34
56 Ambiguity
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Values, as well as skills and knowledge, are essential in distinguishing work […] particularly when skills and expertise are not key differentiators between two disciplines. Defining what differentiates Service Designers from other disciplines illustrates how values and practices are intrinsically intertwined, as values enacted through work practices. (Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky; 2016, pg. 27)
Secondary Research
Practices and Values Poll
When seeking answers to how Service Designers define themselves at large, we found a scholarly article titled How Nascent Occupations Construct a Mandate: The Case of Service Designers Ethos, by Anne-Laure Fayard, Ileana Stigliani, and Beth A. Bechky that had, serendipitously, been published earlier the same month we began our cultural profile, in September of 2016. In this, they refer to a 5-year long study that they had completed with the goal of defining how Service Designers are beginning to differentiate themselves from other traditional designers and management consultants, which enact many similar material practices in their work. The authors show in their paper that “values, as well as skills and knowledge, are essential in distinguishing work… particularly when skills and expertise are not key differentiators between two disciplines” (Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky; 2016, pg. 20) and that “Our analysis of service designers’ ethos illustrates how values and practices are intrinsically intertwined.”
We tested this method of distinction ourselves, and went to the subjects of our research to find how they might define the material practices and values that define themselves as Service Designers, and if they were, in fact, “intrinsically entwined”. With our previous understanding and context of the article the practices and values defined within it, our students provided both validating and initially perplexing answers…
62 60
Material Practices
From a poll of 45 Service Design students we found the top four material practices to be “research, prototyping, problem solving, and visual or graphic design”. These aligned pretty similarly with the practices found in the article: “conducting design research, prototyping, and visualization.” We found that similar work practices were listed from students in other disciplines, and that there did seem to be more overlap to broader work practices than we initially thought. “Problem solving” presented itself as the most recurring practice between all the majors polled in the School of Design, while “Research” was, surprisingly, the most common listed task for Service Design students. However, as Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky state in their study we took inspiration from, “Values without ‘walking the talk’ are but empty words; practices without a sense of mission and meaning can be reproduced by anyone” (Fayard, Stigliani, and Bechky; 2016, pg. 29).
Values
Their study identified the top values in Service Design as “holism, co-creation, and being empathetic”. They argue that values are crucial in defining a disciplines ethos of an emerging occupation, in that each material practice, while drawn from an other disciplines, is built upon a core moral standard that differentiates it from the rest. When our students were asked to define values of their own, the results were somewhat unexpected: “empathy, innovation, collaboration, and research” were the top four repeated values listed for the Service Design discipline. Initially we were unsure about how “research” could be a value, until we became more familiar with our students through a cultural probe. Insights from that information revealed that the values we were given were tied to traits we found in our students, and perhaps were more illuminating than we initially thought. We began to find new meaning in the values we received in the context of our deeper understanding.
Main Insights and Values
Innovation
Ambition to create something new
Research
Being curious about the unknown and complex subject matter
Empathy
Desire to truly understand the v of a situation to design for the situation
Collaboration
Co-creating solutions with diverse team members
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SMS Probe Moving forward, we realized we were going to need a deeper dive into the minds and lives of our students, and that we needed a convenient way to do so since we knew they were always on-the-go and invested in their schoolwork. In today’s technological age, not only are people moving faster than ever, but their attention span is also much shorter. We learned the hard way that young students are not very willing to commit to the effort required in the traditional practice of sending out cultural probes. Our first attempt at cultural probes failed miserably. Participants gave back short answers that gave us no actionable data. We did discover however that working with Service Designers of any age range provided a similar obstacle when faced with a long term commitment. They are used to dealing with ambiguity and complexity in a fast-paced environment. Our research showed us Service Designers in the industry enjoyed shifting topics quickly, and are intrigued by immersing themselves fully in new topics of their work, and therefore declared themselves ‘too busy’ to carry out a week long task without added incentive. We came to the realization that we were dealing with a highly task-oriented user group, and would need to design a more agile experience to catch snippets of reality in their lives. Our solution to breaking through the walls we kept hitting in our research was inspired by a simple text message. We realized we had all the power of communication we needed and wanted at the touch of our fingertips all along, and decided to craft a personal cultural probe messaging experience for our students we were studying. We created a list of tasks for our users to fulfill each day for a week that would allow us to gather information we could not normally gain from surveys or even in an in-depth interview. (see figure A for the list of tasks) While there were some illuminating moments and plenty of advantages to this method, we certainly still ran into some obstacles. While instant messaging is easy and accessible, we found some users perceived it as easily dismissible or unimportant. Since they are in constant communication with their networks and using their smartphones for everything from ‘snapchatting’ their friends to emailing assignments to professors, our messages were subject to get lost in the stream of constant activity. Though our smartphones are incredibly powerful tools for data storage, it was more difficult to get some responses that we asked our users to create anew. Tasks that asked for video walkthroughs or a recording of some sort took additional reminder messages
64 Actual pictures sourced from SD students Fall 2016
to be sent during the course of the day to get a response in a timely fashion, while tasks that asked for photos or text responses were usually received much faster. Our results also showed that students responded faster and more frequently via online SMS, like Facebook messenger, because they were able to jump back and forth between their mobile devices and laptops whether they were on the go or working when crafting responses. Text message responses on the whole showed shorter, less informed responses. Despite its drawbacks, we also found this method to be extremely beneficial to our research for several reasons. Namely, it’s a format that is largely comfortable and familiar with the people we were investigating. Rather than exposing them to a new software or format, we were simply asking them to reply to our questions the same way they were communicating with friends and family on a regular basis. We found that the students in our subject group were more inclined to reply to our direct messages and complete the required tasks in a timely fashion via their smartphones over any of the other methods we used (including both physical and online surveys, scheduled interviews, and physical activity worksheets to be completed and sent back). Additionally, our exploration of this method proved that, no matter the existing relationship between the subject and the person sending tasks, majority of the participants felt more comfortable to share aspects their personal lives and opinions through text or Facebook messenger than they did responding to online or physical surveys with the same type of question- the format provides a sense of immediate privacy and intimacy that does not seem to be found anywhere else through remote communication.
Figure A
Figure B Our findings from this research helped us better understand and connect the material practices and values we recorded from our students, and enabled us to select several students near the end of their degree and alumni in the field to interview about their perspective on the program to enhance upon and validate our previous findings. For more information on this method and how we came to it, view the LinkedIn article “Intimate Conversations with Service Design Students at SCAD�, published by Polly Adams and Oscar Elmendorf.
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Interviews After conducting our cultural probe through SMS, we selected four promising candidates to interview one-on-one to get more qualitative information about their lives and journey at SCAD. Each one of us spent time with a current or previous Service Design student to better understand their motivations and emotions tied to their time at school and thoughts about the discipline at large. Our hidden agenda behind this was to continue validating and developing our understanding of the material practices and values that resulted from our previous poll. These interviews put an end to our research in enabling us to connect golden nuggets of information from throughout our research to real life experiences and emotions. We learned that our blossoming relationship with Service Design students had, in fact, revealed more about ourselves as well. We were a part of this student body, and we had invested our time in this education as well. We were speaking with different individuals in our department, but looking into a mirror of sorts as well.
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We interviewed a student (G.M., 27) pursuing a BFA in Service Design with a minor in both Industrial Design and Business. This student reinforces the international attention Service Design has procured in the last several years, demonstrating a great deal of ambition and courage committing herself to something difficult to define. She highlighted the ability to collaborate with other designers and share different perspectives to create a truly holistic view with other designers. The message from one particular student (M.C., 21) reaching the end of his senior year was of perseverance, and finds enjoyment in the freedom of ambiguous prompts and projects. Many spend their first several classes in the Service Design department completely overwhelmed and even perhaps confused as to what they think they should be doing. After experiencing the frustration that can come from a lack of direction, it’s incredibly empowering to see the freedom that the breadth of Service Design offers. Sticking to something even when it may seem impossible to grasp can be difficult, but incredibly rewarding.
Three themes that became important when discussing backgrounds with an experienced graduate student (C.L., 25) of the program: people, collaboration, and leveraging your team. Wanting to work with people of different backgrounds, learning about team members on a personal level, and being able to balance work and life in order to spend time with family is very important. Collaborating and co-creating with people is crucial to the future of design and innovation and caring about your teammates on a personal level can not be recreated.
This final stage of our research allowed us to craft final insights about the Service Design students at SCAD that solidified our personal comprehension of the community we had become embedded in during our time in the School of Design.
“
We were speaking with different individuals in our department, but looking into a mirror of sorts, as well.
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Hiring a Service Designer A Service Designer is a professional capable of effectively support organizations to design and implement innovative service propositions through three key aspects: Understanding Stakeholders Developing Innovative Offerings (goods and services) Managing Institutional Transition. The following table for assessing Service Designers was crafted by Mauricio Manhaes, Xenia Viladas, and Louis Baker for SCAD, August 2016.
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Why hire a Service Designer?
What should I assess them on?
Understanding Stakeholders
With training in qualitative and quantitative research methodology and tools, coupled with advanced design and co-creation skills, a SD is able to develop and communicate a holistic yet detailed analysis of the various factors that impact the relationship of an organization with current and prospective stakeholders.
Assess the candidate on his/her: (a) qualitative and quantitative research skills on human-centered design (including workshop facilitation) and business-related aspects affecting an organization (b) ability to locate, acquire and analyze data, and provide a context related interpretation through specific methods and tools, and (c) competence in visualizing and communicating effectively and meaningfully the results of research.
Developing innovative offerings
Having a deep understanding of service and of the complexities involved in its lifecycles (which may include a solid knowledge about the Service-Dominant Logic), a SD is able to identify and communicate strategic opportunities and to ideate and design innovative propositions with the power to disrupt, thus propelling institutions into preferred futures.
Assess the candidate on his/her: (a) understanding of the organization’s offerings (goods and services), production and delivery system in context, (b) ability to identify strategic opportunities and how to leverage them, and (c) proficiency in designing propositions that both differentiate and propel the organization’s offerings towards innovation.
Possessing a broad socio-historic perspective on the economic landscape, a SD is able to develop and communicate a constantly updated understanding of macro and micro-trends that may contribute to effectively encourage and manage institutional transitions into the future.
Assess the candidate on his/her: (a) socio-historic and economic understanding of social contexts, (b) ability to identify and screen the relevant trends attending to different criteria and goals. (c) empathy and collaboration skills that can facilitate both internal and external organizational transition.
Understanding institutional transition
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Sources Cited Anne-Laure Fayard, Ileana Stigliani, and Beth A. Bechky. How Nascent Occupations Construct a Mandate: The Case of Service Designers’ Ethos Administrative Science Quarterly 0001839216665805, first published on September 1, 2016 doi:10.1177/0001839216665805 The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, Central Office of Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Recommended Reading Alvesson, M., Hardy, C., & Harley, B. (2008). Reflecting on reflexivity: Reflexive textual practices in organization and management theory. Journal of management studies, 45(3), 480-501. Alvesson, M. (2001). Knowledge work: Ambiguity, image and identity. Human relations, 54(7), 863-886.Buchanan, R. (2015). Worlds in the making: design, management, and the Reform of Organizational culture. She ji: the journal of design, economics, and Innovation, 1(1), 5-21. Anne-Laure Fayard, Ileana Stigliani, and Beth A. Bechky. How Nascent Occupations Construct a Mandate: The Case of Service Designers’ Ethos Administrative Science Quarterly 0001839216665805, first published on September 1, 2016 doi:10.1177/0001839216665805 Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2007). Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development. Academy of management review, 32(4), 1265-1281. Blomkvist, J., & Holmlid, S. (2012, September). Service prototyping according to service design practitioners. In Conference Proceedings; ServDes. 2010; Exchanging Knowledge; Linköping; Sweden; 1-3 December 2010 (No. 060, pp. 1-11). Linköping University Electronic Press. Darwin, C., & Appleman, P. (2002). The Origin of Species. Norton. Dewey, J. (1934). Having an experience. Art as experience, 36-59. Foucault, M. (1971). Orders of discourse. Social science information, 10(2), 7-30. Habermas, J. (2005). Knowledge and human interests: A general perspective (pp. 310-321). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Mumford, E. (2006). The story of socio-technical design: Reflections on its successes, failures and potential. Information Systems Journal, 16(4), 317-342. Simon, H. “chapter: The science of design, creating the artificial.” The sciences of the artificial, Cambridge, MIT Press, (1982).
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Simon, H. A. (1991). Bounded rationality and organizational learning. Organization science, 2(1), 125-134. Simon, H. A. (1996). “Economic Rationality: Adaptive Artifice.” Pp. 25-49 (Chapter 2) in The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Simon, H. A. (1988). The science of design: Creating the artificial. Design Issues, 67-82. Simonton, D. K. (2011). Creativity and discovery as blind variation: Campbell’s (1960) BVSR model after the half-century mark. Review of General Psychology, 15(2), 158. Stickdorn, M., Schneider, J., Andrews, K., & Lawrence, A. (2011). This is service design thinking: Basics, tools, cases. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2008). Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution. Journal of the Academy of marketing Science, 36(1), 1-10. Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of marketing, 68(1), 1-17. Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2016). Institutions and axioms: an extension and update of service-dominant logic. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(1), 5-23. Veling, L., Thornley, C., Murnane, S., Browne, A., & McQuillan, L. (2015). Selecting a Suitable Methodology for Designing Innovative Solutions to Support Capability Improvement in a Complex Organisational Context as part of an IndustryAcademic Collaboration. In Proceedings of 18th Annual Irish Academy of Management Conference.
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