New sdn members

During the last two months, two new members have joined the Service Design Network. Welcome everyone!

Find out more about our new members:

Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
teaminterface | Seoul, South Korea

Connecting the dots – Service Design Conference 2010

All the submissions for the Service Design Conference in Berlin this October have been collected. We want to thank you for your contributions; we received over 90 exciting and innovative proposals for lectures, workshops and talks! The most promising proposals have been selected in order to make a programme as exciting and diversified as possible; we are currently finishing the programme. The final programme will be published on the Service Design Network as soon as possible! Get a first glance at the two days; which will each have a specific focus. The first will be set up for clients and business partners in order to give an inside view of Service Design and the value it has forindustry. The second will be composed for Service Designers to exchange knowledge and dig deeper into the field. Additionally there will be a special conference programme for students! Excited? Registration will open soon - watch out for it at the end of June!
For more information, click here!

Touchpoint Issue 4: Design and Behavioural Change is out now! 
Design is in many aspects the agent or tool that helps influencing the behaviour of people such as customers, employers and employees.
Especially the discipline of Service Design can have an important impact on behavioural structures. In creating emotional impact, support structures and networks, implementing roles and role models, changing the physical environment and introducing relevant rewards it has the facilities to build and rebuild behavioural systems. Services are systems of interactions and actions. The behaviour of people within these interactions and actions is thus a crucial part of Service Design.
This fourth issue of Touchpoint gives an insight into theoretical models and practical projects dealing with behavioural change. Find lots of interesting and inspiring cross fertilisations inside this new issue! Buy your copy here.

Service Design Network Germany
The Service Design Network Germany held its first meeting at the Köln International School of Design on May 14th. The group developed a strategic plan to enhance Service Design in German politics, economics and society in general. The founding of Service Design Network Germany is part of a process to strengthen the Service Design community worldwide. The SDN has grown a lot during the last year and the need of building national chapters has come up to represent the Service Design community all around the world. National chapters will enable better exchange of information through network building and will be able to accomplish more on a local scale. The National chapters will be represented on the Service Design Network website, allowing for better communications between groups within the network, and enabling members to think global and act local.
Download a pdf of the meeting’s protocol here.

Master in Service Design at Domus Academy.
Taking advantage from the long experience and knowledge developed within the field with research and education projects, Domus Academy is pleased to announce the start up of the Master in Service Design. The new master program – January/December 2011 – is aimed at developing professional skills for Service Design and Management, with a strong focus on the quality of the overall customer experience and the design of innovative service ideas. The programme addresses professionals and graduates in humanistic studies, social sciences and communication, business and design-related disciplines, desiring to work in the service industry. The program will include investigations on customer experience, service innovation and service branding as well as thematic design workshops focused on specific B2C service sectors.  Join the competition "Unexpected Courtesy” and send your service idea proposal to get a scholarship! Read more here.

KISD students have energy for ideas

The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) launched a national competition for students throughout Germany as part of the Year of Science 2010. The brief of the competition was to design ways to get young people interested in the increasingly important topic of Energy Research. A panel of 7 independent scientists and communication specialists chose 13 winning projects to be awarded €10,000 to make their projects a reality this year. A team of 3 International students from the Köln Inernational School of Design (KISD) won a prize with their Service Design project! The team proposed ‘Energy Labs’, a modular game to play in schools that provides a playful dive into the topic of Energy Research. Each week, children take on the roles of different energy researchers, and through active learning, gain an understanding of the variety of ways you can contribute to energy research, why it is important, and how fun it can be! For more information on the competition, and to see the other winning projects, click here. (Sorry, German only)

Shaping National Policy for Service Innovation
The Swedish government is developing a national policy for service innovation in collaboration with Service Design agencies and specialists. The Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications stated: “In order to meet future challenges, we need to know more about how innovation is created in the service economy, becoming more able to respond to the needs and better represent development opportunities.” Service Design is the starting point for relevant customer service innovation. With this in mind, Transformator, Sweden’s largest Service Design Agency, have been asked to take part. Stefan Holmild, Service Design professor at Linköping University is also contributing to the project. Read more here.

Researching Sustainable Consumption
Sedes Research is working in collaboration with Service works in a study on sustainable consumption patterns for Unilever and the REWE group. There is a great deal of quantitive research indicating that customers want to buy fair trade, sustainable products. Despite the clear interest in sustainable consumption, shopping patterns often do not match; so the team is carrying out an in-depth research project, with the aim of understanding grocery shopping habits - focussing not on the numbers, but the human side. We look forward to the results!

ServDes.2010: Extended deadline for contributions  
The deadline to apply to contribute to the ServDes.2010 conference in Linköping, Sweden, has been extended. The topic for this year’s conference is ExChanging Knowledge. ServDes invites contributions from researchers and practitioners who wish to contribute to the development of a knowledge base on service design, and openly discuss the challenges of the field. The deadline for all paper contributions is July 2nd, 2010. all accepted contributors will be informed in October. For more information on how to apply, click here.    

This is Service Design Thinking

The book project "This is Service Design Thinking." starts it last iteration of the toolbox-like collection of methods & tools. With the uservoice forum the community can vote which 25 methods and tools should be included in the book. If you think that there is something missing, you can also add methods or tools and put them on vote by the community. For more information, see the brand new website here.

SieMatic are Improving Services 

SieMatic is one of the leading premium kitchen manufacturers based in Germany. In order to improve SieMatic's customer touchpoints, the team from Sedes Research is gaining an insight into the company's service delivery. The main focus lies on three levels of the company - internal communication, distribution, and consumption. Sedes Research provides employees and customers with design tools to better understand how they perceive SieMatic's service. We look forward to seeing the results of this exciting research project!

The International Journal of Design: Service Design Issue
The International Journal of Design (IJD), which is devoted to the transfer of design knowledge among professionals in academia and industry, will be publishing a special issue on designing for services that emphasises a human-centred design approach to Service Design. Submissions for articles are being accepted now, and the IJD is pleased to announce that the three best papers submitted to the ServDes conference, as well as the three best papers from the International Service Design Network Conference, will be allowed as fast-track submissions. Professor Birgit Mager and Tung-Jung David Sung are the editors of this special issue. Abstracts (optional) should be submitted by August 31st. Final papers must be submitted by October 31st. Read more here.

Telecom Cloud: Communication for the world’s poorest people
Movirtu and frog design have teamed up to create a series of products for a population in need - people living on fewer than $2 per day. The MX product series enables better communication between people in some of the world’s poorest countries, and empowers the disempowered. The designers identified 6 basic needs of the people they were designing for: pride, privacy & security, identity, education, enablement and connection. MXShare is a service, which when installed in the core of a mobile network establishes a virtual mobile phone system that allows those who cannot afford a handset to use other people’s phones. With this service you do not have to take your phone apart and swap sim-cards, and incentives are provided to the phone owners, who can actually be rewarded for sharing their handset. The results of the 2010 MEX Mobile User Experience Awards we announced on May 19th in London, and Morvitu and frog design won the top prize!

To download the PDF, click here.

For information on the MEX Mobile User Experience Awards, click here.  

Care to Air Challenge: Levi’s are building brand value 
Levi’s have launched a new competition, which will award $10,000 to the person who can design the most innovative drying solution for clothing. The motivation for the challenge is to reduce the carbon footprint of your jeans, 80% of which is produced in the drying process. If your jeans dry faster, they use less energy, so Levi’s are calling for jeans that air-dry! Levis is one of many companies calling upon their customers for collaboration. This style of open-source collaboration can help to reinforce community values, and humanise brand character by reconnecting with people. Through efforts such as the ‘Care to Air Challenge’, brands like Levi’s are bringing together community and sustainability to create a more compelling brand story. The deadline for competition entries is July 31st, to download the rules of the challenge, click here. For more information, click here.

Publications from the web 

"Forming versus Coding", by Tim Brown

Read here.

"How about Networks", by Tim Brown

Read here.  

"Bonfire of the Literacies", By John Thackara

Read here. 

"Digitale Gesellschaft D21", from TNS Infratest (Sorry, German only)

Read here.

"Research in practice: Bringing behavioural change from lab to studio", by Nick Marsh and Dan Lockton

Read here.  

"Designing the Design Problem", by frog design

Read here.

Design with Intent: 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour through Design By Dan Lockton, David Harrison and Neville Stanton
Dan Lockton, David H­arisson and Neville Stanton wrote a fantastic article in Touchpoint 4 regarding design for behavioural change, which they are approaching with their new Service Design toolkit DwIv.1.0: 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour through Design. The toolkit consists of 101 simple cards illustrating a particular ‘gambit’ for influencing people’s interactions with products, services, environments and each other, via the design of systems. These are clustered by eight ‘lenses’ (Architectural, Interaction, Perceptual, Cognitive…etc), which bring different disciplinary perspectives on behavioural change. The cards should be particularly useful in the generation stage of the design process, helping designers, clients, and potential users explore behavioural change concepts from different disciplines, and seeing how they relate to the problem at hand. Each gambit is phrased as a question, in the hope that the cards can actively provoke innovation. e.g. “Can you influence users by helping them reduce feelings of guilt about their behaviour?” Download the Design with Intent toolkit here.

“Connected” by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler
"Your colleague’s husband’s sister can make you fat, even if you don’t know her. A happy neighbour has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse.” These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. In this book, the entire notion of the individual is turned on it’s head, as Christakis and Fowler explore the paradigm that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships and so much more. Connected provides insights on how we can manage social networks as we understand more how they operate. This book is a thought-provoking reflection on the power of networks to achieve many things, as growing organisms with potential that classically design organisations struggle with.  

Watch the TED talk from Nicholas Christakis here. 

For more information, click here.

CityNomads: Paid Internship / diploma thesis at the VOLKSWAGEN RESEARCH GROUP
The Volkswagen Research Group is offering a paid internship to write a diploma thesis on the mobility requirements of users in urban space (specifically, Berlin). This intersnship calls for people with Service Design knowledge (research methods will include emphatic design studies, design probes and personas). Working with a team of media scientists and design researchers, you will explore, research, and prepare a concept. This work will ultimately play a critical role in the preparation for the Service Design Conference in Berlin this October. Internship Starts: September 2010 Duration: 8-12 weeks (+3 months for preparing the thesis) For more information, click here.

ThinkPublic are recruiting new team members!
ThinkPublic is looking for a talented Service Designer / social innovator to join their exciting, award-winning social innovation and design agency. For more information, please download the PDF here.

Thinkpublic is looking for a talented project manager to join our exciting, award-wining social innovation and design agency. For more information, please download the PDF here.

To visit ThinkPublic, click here.