We were there to introduce service design to public, private and third sector workers from all kinds of organisations. The response was fantastic (consistently we heard a near-logically spoken response "this is great, there should be more of it!"), and encouragingly a number of visitors had already heard of service design to some extent. Could the discipline be finally maturing?!
Aviv Katz ran workshops for Engine on both days in a space that was shared, as was our exhibition plot, reinforcing the general feeling that all service designers are in this together, as a supportive community, regardless of their studio loyalties! Finishing the week many attended Service Design Drinks, this time up in East London.
In summary, I think service design can particularly benefit health providers and users in the following ways:
Providing the compelling qualitative research required to make a project happen and to ensure it is reliably informed through a variety of research methods.
Engaging end users, front line staff and managers in democratic, open environments and a collaborative design process which helps develop more relevant, useful and appropriate services centred around users.
Transferring knowledge, tools and processes to the institutions and organisations through demonstrative projects. This was sometimes met with initial skepticism, as this and particularly embedding cultural change are very difficult, but it can be done!
Watch this space for a round up of some of the excellent online health services emerging on the interweb. Lauren Tan has also written a report on the day here.
I've had a recent blogging hiatus as for the last two weeks I've been holidaying in Montreal and Toronto, taking in the sights and exposing myself to Canada's culture, nature and a little of its design scene.
Canada's rolling snow farms produce 53.8% of the world's snow all year round...
There are some reassuringly global trends in both education and practice around service design. On the educational side, there's plenty beginning to emerge, if it is a bit behind the UK.
I was invited to the final exhibition of the Design Management course at Georgebrown University, where I was lucky enough to meet Luigi Ferrara, head of the design school and also course director of the Institute Without Boundaries, set up by Bruce Mau and something I have mentioned many times on this blog. The importance of making sure design processes are introduced to help solve the world's largest and most complex problems is something I can't possibly stress enough.
There's also an emerging appetite for design thinking in business education. Designworks consultancy-cum-MA at the Rotman Business School, UoT is led by Roger Martin, who recently released The Opposable Mind; sorry I have no personal review (it's on order!) but there's a good outline in this interview.
Sorry to repeat a phrase that's everywhere at the moment, but in 'these financially difficult times', of particular interest was the Design Exchange in Toronto, performing a similar function to the Design Council in the UK but also maintaining two large exhibition spaces, which the DC jettisoned a long time ago to pursue its status as the UK government's design 'do tank'.
The comparison between the magnificent old Toronto Exchange building, once powering the economy, and its new role housing exhibitions on urban farming and the connections between architecture and quality of life and well-being were striking. The beautiful art deco trading floor is now empty and quiet, occasionally home to events more concerned with different definitions of value and currency.
I really believe that we're at a crossroads of both the economy and the environment, and the two can no longer be largely opposed in their values, goals and effects. Canada in particular is streets ahead in some parts in its awareness of the environment and miles ahead in others.
We in the UK should be proud of our progress and status in the field of service design, but never complacent. Canada is just one of many places catching up quickly, accelerating its progress with the increasingly intricate mesh of networking and ideas exchange online. Moreover, it has a lot to teach us about establishing a culture of heightened environmental consciousness.
This weekend I took part in the London Design Festival's Goldsmiths-spawned 24 hour Design Challenge, based in Deptford on the site of a new development beside the high street. Teams were originally allocated by discipline, but the thirty or so designers organically re-shuffled as new projects emerged. Interdisciplinarianism, eh?
It was an experiment to see what such an intensive experience could produce, with the aim of the exhibition being to showcase the pieces that emerge from it and also the process of designing itself. The site was open to visitors throughout, but a low level of awareness with the non-design industry public outside caused a number of us to seek out ways in which we could engage with the local community.
We were keen to avoid a behind-the-scenes 'designers doing some wacky shit then having an exclusive party that is an essentially intimidating environment for locals' and leaving having kept the neighbours up and a mess behind.
Our first task was to use £10 in the local (excellent, amazing and project-saving on several occasions) flea market to bring back objects that interested us and then create devices that helped tell their story. Ours was a beautiful, hand-written title deed to a field in Kent form 1853. Over a couple of thousand words were used to explicitly explain the extent of the estate, without any diagrams, maps, co-ordinates or tables of measurements. It was almost indecipherable.
We did however try to re-interpret it and visualise it in our own ways, which led us to our first design - a table which people from the local community and visitors to the exhibition could use to map the are in their own way. The docking station consisted of a compass made from a clock with the minute hand saying 'north'. This constantly changing north would give us a random sample and spread of the area, with participants heading in 100m (as they estimated) before recording what they could see, who they have spoken to there or are with, what they think of that place, what colours, textures they could see. These 'x' shaped pieces of paper would then be collated, computed and exhibited as a very human, abstract map of the area.
This initial design was a step in the right direction, but our group (installation) merged with product to see how we could develop something that asked less of the participants and offered more interaction and reward. What we came up with was two projects commencing around 10pm - 'Polenta Politics' - a sophisticated voting system involving a catapult, some issues on a board and some messy painted polenta balls and 'Deptford Cares' - some items made to help the community care for its public spaces and express what they like and dislike about them.
At the heart of these projects was the potential for a much larger project, should we choose to undertake it - how to engage a local community to communicate its feelings about where they live in innovative new ways and to provide the tools to co-design, improve and sustain public spaces. Hmmm.
Target practice gathers an audience in the wee hours...
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