Service Design in M. Design at UTS, Australia

Sometimes it's funny to be led right back to where one started.

I completed my undergraduate design degree at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia and just discovered they have added new majors to their Master of Design Degree, inclusive of Service Design. Here's what it says:

Service Design

The future of business is the delivery of customised experiences. This future depends upon design, on the expert ability to visualise and plan interactions. This specialisation puts designers in the driving seat of a major economic shift now underway. It shows designers how to shift from product development to service innovation through techniques like experience notation, service blueprinting and touchpoint management. This is the first service design degree program in Australia.

ISDN 3

The third International Service Design Northumbria conference happened last week on Wednesday 2 April and Thursday 3 April, 2008.


The event was to illustrate the scope of PhD research in design around social issues and design which places people in the middle of both the design process and design outcomes.

The conference kicked off on Wednesday evening at Northumbria University's School of Design gallery space with an introduction from Robert Young, Associate Dean of the School and keynote presentation from Anna Meroni, Assistant Professor in Service and Strategic Design at the Politecnico di Milano.

Anna talked about her involvement and the project called Creative Communities, which aimed to increase our understanding of innovation through identifying and presenting case studies of social innovation throughout the world. Anna's keynote was right on the mark. Messages and themes from her presentation were carried throughout the conference, especially through the 7 PhD research presentations the following day. For a run down on each presentation, Bas Rajimakers, blogged the event, in situ on his website here.

The conference was not without some good social mixing, even though some feedback requested for more next time. Our first night saw the majority of us hit The Cluny in Newcastle's up-and-coming creative hub the Ouseburn Valley.


A well-timed 10am start the following morning launched us into 7 PhD research students' presentations. These students, including myself, were PhD's of both past and present, and I know that most of us felt disappointed we did not have more time to discuss ideas, themes and issues.

A plenary session closed the conference. It took us all a bit of time to warm up, but then good conversations happened right up until the clock struck 4pm. We adjourned having made new contacts, new friends and taking away with us a whole load of new ideas.

Endnote for PhD thesis referencing

Am just finishing up Endnote training at the University this morning. What a great little tool to help with the massive amount of references for PhD students. Would highly recommend it as it saves loads of time with referencing in your documents and also your Bibliography. I think the niftiest thing is that the references can be linked to pdf documents saved on your computer.

However, some limitations of the programme include:

• It doesn't have a spell check
• It doesn't consistently format your references so you'll have to tweak things yourself
• It won't put the page numbers in your document referencing so you'll need to do this manually

Get T5 some Service Designers please!

We all know the dramas of T5.

Here's an article in today's Guardian citing the Government on T5 as an "unacceptably poor travel experience" and the need for British Airways 'to place a "much greater emphasis" on the needs of passengers.'

But what is more desperately needed is a proper systems design. The backlog of 28,000 bags demonstrates there is definitely something broke in this sordid system.

The financial costs are also ridiculous.

Someone needs to hire some Service Designers.

CIID's Service Design Symposium

I am rather disappointed that I missed out on the Service Design Symposium at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). The 2-day event brought together a great line-up on speakers and from the symposium recap here it sounded like a great exchange forum on the emerging area.

The CIID have already begun to post some of the symposium's happenings, beginning with an excerpt from Bill Hollin's presentation.

Dott 07 Explorers Club

The final Explorers Club for Dott 07 happened last Wednesday night, 12 March 2008.



The evening brought together a community of Dott 07 people- the Dott 07 Team, those who were deeply involved in the projects and those who have been enthusiastically watching and supporting the Dott 07 initiative over the past few years.

I was going to write up the night, but Claire has done a really wonderful job on the Dott 07 website. She reports all that happened on the night which you can find here.

Climate Change: Fact or Fiction

Last month, Ben and I, with some friends, went to a talk on climate change held at World Head Quarters as part of a series of free talks held under the banner of Café Scientifique.

To sum it up, it is really disappointing. The facts and fiction were far too simple for the audience that was in attendance. In the Q&A time Ben asked, we all know and believe that climate change is happening (no more convincing needed!), so what is the role of the scientist now?

This stumped the guest speaker. She agreed that scientists brought messages of what happened in the world (note past-tense). We can make projections from this about what will happen in the future, but what and who, is going to do anything about it?

Ben suggested that maybe that was a role for designers and engineers and the lack of understanding of what design could bring by the general public was well highlighted in the subsequent discussion where engineers and technology were seen as the answer to going forward with action to tackle the climate change issue.

My question (which I did not get chance to ask) was why do we need to invent new technologies, in the first place, to help climate change? Why can’t we just use what we already have, re-organise and re-connect things that already exist (such as John Thackara writes in this book, In The Bubble), change our behaviours and lifestyles to accommodate our move towards environmental sustainability? As you may have picked up already, this is very much the ethos of Dott 07. My other big insight into last night was the fact that no one in the audience knew what design meant and no one seemed to know about Dott 07, with it’s huge environmental sustainability theme.

Last night was another reminder of the difference between science and design and an even more significant reminder that we, as designers, have a long way to go to help the public understand design and it’s contributions.