An Introduction to Service Design

While service design is connected with traditional design domains, such as visual communication and the built environment, it is equally connected to organizational policies, protocols, business models, scripts, and choreographies. So, as service design aggregates different practices and mindsets and enters new domains and possibilities, it may actually help redefine design altogether and reshape our understanding of what design really does and what capabilities it entails. This book makes a case for service design as an original and legitimate design practice in its own right, an ambitious and transdisciplinary design practice occupying a strategic space between creating visions of sustainable social and environmental futures, and negotiating these visions within organizational and political realities. Service designers therefore have the challenge of dealing with businesses, government, and the civil society at large, as our efforts can affect labor relations, economic performance, and public policy.