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Developments in service design thinking and practice

This research builds on-going research by Young contributing to the research community involved in phase 2 of the Embracing Complexity in Design (ECiD) project, part of the Designing in the 21st Century RCUK programme. Young uses the practice of service design as an object of enquiry to represent and reflect upon evolving contexts of complexity in design.

Editors were the ECiD principal investigators; Johnson and Alexiou, who concur with Young, that ECiD’s real-world impacts, touched on three levels of complexity with respect to design, i.e.; complex objects, processes and systems; productive complexity in design processes; and the complex and emergent context of design practices. Each is an object of academic enquiry and the concern of the wider world with regard to; national economies, competitive business, service provision and the quality of contemporary experience.

ECiD was a cross-disciplinary and cross-sector research programme hence Young presented at ’Researching complexity, dynamic form and the design process’, MORE is MORE 2-4D Product Design for the Everyday at the Science Museum, London (6th May 2008). Thinking from the book chapter has been further developed and validated at the Dott Cornwall 2010 Think Tank also featuring in; Open Discussion, Appendix 1, Design for Services, Meroni, A. and Sangiorgi, D., (2011, Gower), p.237. The concept of tolerance of ambiguity was tested at the Creative practice, complexity and the creative economy’ Research Symposium University of Birmingham, UK (31st May 2012), leading to the invited keynote; Design, complexity and the role of empathy in design, 12th Design Research Conference, IIT Institute of Design, October 2013, Chicago.