Designing for Service: Key Issues and New Directions

Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers. It is now a growing field of both practice and academic research. Designing for Service brings together a wide range of international contributors to map the field of service design and identify key issues for practitioners and researchers such as identity, ethics and accountability. Designing for Service aims to problematize the field in order to inform a more critical debate within service design, thereby supporting its development beyond the pure methodological discussions that currently dominate the field. The contributors to this innovative volume consider the practice of service design, ethical challenges designers may encounter, and the new spaces opened up by the advent of modern digital technologies.

Daniela Sangiorgi is Professor at the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She has been one of the first scholars studying service design and co-editor of two leading books (Design for Services, 2011; Designing for Service, Bloomsbury, 2017). She worked 8 years in the UK (ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University). Her expertise is design for service innovation, with a focus on public services and healthcare. She is a member of Polimi DeSIS Lab (https://www.desis.polimi.it).

Alison Prendiville is Professor of Service Design at LCC University of the Arts London, UK. Her work is transdisciplinary working with health and social care professionals, scientists, engineers, and anthropologists to facilitate and converge design with science and technology for the development of locally situated services and policy developments to address societal challenges. Along with Daniela Sangiorgi she edited the book Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017).