Service design: tuning the industrial design profession

Design is not only about the design and production of goods, but is increasingly addressing complex social issues nowadays. Roles of designers are becoming more and more varied, and at the same time other professionals are increasingly using design tools in their business, organizational or other innovation projects. New terms such as ‘service design’, ‘design thinking’, or even ‘co-creation’ are quite popular at the moment, but confusing as well: depending on the discipline people mean very different processes or methodologies with these terms. In this paper, we zoom in on the rise of service design. Service design is a user-centred approach to design, just as industrial design is. The contexts of users and their needs, motivations and feelings are starting points for the design process. In the form of a think tank, we critically reflected on current developments in design practice in order to tune the industrial design profession to the latest developments of design practice. Besides a better understanding of what service design brings and how it relates to industrial design practice, we explicitly formulated suggestions for current industrial design curricula, since many new graduated design students do projects in, and find jobs in service design projects.