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Service Design in the Age of AI – An Analysis of Real-World Use Cases
No full textThis paper analyses the critical intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Service Design, exploring how AI integration fundamentally reshapes business operations and customer interactions. Through a qualitative study of real-world use cases, this research provides a comprehensive overview of current applications, categorizing them into mechanical, thinking, and feeling AI to frame the discussion. The analysis illuminates’ opportunities and challenges presented by this technological convergence. It addresses key paradoxes, such as augmentation versus automation, and investigates the ethical, legal, and societal implications of human-AI collaboration. This work bridges research gaps by providing a richer conceptualization of AI\u27s impact, offering a framework for strategically enhancing value co-creation and customer experiences
Mental Health and Wellbeing Practices in Design Education: A Call for Action
No full textAlarming numbers of university design students are experiencing significant issues related to their mental health and wellbeing. While the conditions affecting their mental health are systemic, universities play a key role in addressing academic related factors. This paper aims to better understand the stressors impacting design students’ wellbeing and identify strategies for addressing them. It reviews general academic and design-specific stressors highlighted in the literature. Drawing from a small sample of European design schools, the paper also shares promising practices for addressing these stressors. Kick-starting cross-institutional sharing, it offers a starting point for further collective efforts to improve student wellbeing
Collaborative Theorizing with Energy Data
No full textThis study explores the intersection of theory, participatory design, experimental research-through-design, and data physicalization to uncover the relationships between young people, their daily objects, and energy data. We introduce ‘Theory Instruments’ to teenagers, graduate students, and young professionals to encourage them to think about their own energy use along with anthropological, physiological, and visual perception theories and phenomenological concepts. These instruments heighten awareness of otherwise invisible energy consumption practices through visual and tangible data representations. Through projects addressing electricity, water usage, and recycling, participants co-created knowledge by developing actionable insights into their habits. We propose the concept of ‘Collaborative Theorizing’ as a way of describing how participants engage in making sense of their quantitative data. The research reveals how theory can serve as a tool for designers and collaborators to enhance reflection, encourage sustainable practices, and expand the scope of participatory design within socio-political and material contexts. By dissolving the traditional boundaries between participants, designers, and researchers, the study presents collaborative theorizing as a framework for co-producing knowledge and fostering behavioral change
How Do You Feel? Physical Vocabularies for Communicating Pain Using Data Physicalization
No full textThe experience of pain, particularly chronic pain, can be difficult to communicate. Current best practice involves communicating pain to clinicians verbally on a numerical scale or via a visual Likert scale. However, we argue that verbal vocabularies and visual scales do not effectively capture the complexities and narrative journey of individuals recovering and living through chronic pain. We argue that as pain is a multidimensional experience that includes physical and physiological elements, we need a more nuanced way of describing the experience. Thus, we have explored how people can explain their pain (whether affective or sensory) by interacting with a touch display to design 3D printable objects as shareable physical objects. Our work seeks to combine physical affordances with conceptual metaphors to communicate pain “physically” through a discursive communication tool. We present a prototype interface that allows users to drag sliders to transform and deform a 3D object, and then describe how the physical geometry represents their pain through a text input field. We conducted an observational study to examine the vocabulary of geometries associated with pain by making our pain interface available to the public within a museum exhibition. Over a six-month period, museum visitors could view the exhibit and interact and engage with a pain object digital gallery, and create their own data physicalisations representing a “painful experience.” A number of these artefacts were then 3D-printed and presented on a touch table for other visitors to interpret and examine. We present preliminary findings toward the development of a physicalisation process that could assist in pain communication, and conclude with challenges and future directions
Seasonal design
No full textImagine it is a rainy winter day, and you are walking up to a little mustard yellow house on wheels and step up three wooden steps to enter. You notice the pulsing light of candles and the warmth of the fireplace that is heating the indoors. Some people are sitting around the table dreaming of how they would use the house if they could borrow it for a while. You take a step inside to join and have some tea. While stepping in you hear the splash of a puddle and feel your socks soak up water before you even get your foot back on the doorstep. What just happened? We built the Tiny House on Wheels to explore relations to resources and today\u27s challenges through a series of seasonal experimentations. These interventions enable physical experiences as a starting point to become aware and engage in discussion about the underlying themes of householding with resources in a holistic way. In this exploratory article we look back at two full cycles of experiments and do so by reflecting on the seasons they were situated in. As a result, we suggest designers to challenge themselves to work with relationships between temporality, place and forces such as seasons into constantly emerging designs. Furthermore, we suggest seasonal designing as a practical and conceptual response to contemporary grand and complex eco-social challenges and life-long learning
Exploring haunted spaces of participation through justice
No full textThis paper discusses participation and its impact through the lenses of justice and, identifying burdens, questioning representation issues unwillingly created, prompting careful consideration of participatory methods and highlighting power tensions in relation to the participants. Specifically, it scrutinizes the dimensions of participation, addressing who participates, where, when, and how participation occurs. Furthermore, by investigating the ghosts of participation—the lingering effects and unintended consequences of participation—we investigate the broader implications of participatory processes on individuals and communities. This paper aims to contribute to the growing discourse of participation from a justice perspective, offering insights into how public participation can be reviewed to better serve principles of justice
Design briefs after progress
No full textDesign briefs can be expressions of needs expressed not only by educators but also by external actors and society more broadly. They are where societal needs, expectations, wishes and desires meet the internal, local and situated logic of design and design education. In this workshop, we aim to make an inventory of past and current design briefs and start to re-imagine them by moving beyond the taken-for-granted starting point of continued growth. We are led by the overarching question: what could a design brief become when it is actively intended to shift away from notions of design as formulated in traditions of continuous financial growth and problem-solving
Cultural sovereignty and the future of Indigenous digital storytelling
No full textIndigenous digital storytelling extends beyond sharing narratives—it is a practice of cultural sovereignty, self-determination, and knowledge stewardship. Digital storytelling aligns with Indigenous research methodologies, emphasising relationality, oral traditions, and community-centred knowledge production, ensuring that these stories remain rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. While digital media provides opportunities for Indigenous communities to share their narratives, it also poses risks of appropriation, misrepresentation, and external control. This study examines how relational design and participatory methodologies can support Indigenous digital storytelling while respecting cultural protocols and reinforcing community governance. By critically analysing existing storytelling frameworks, we explore whether participatory design genuinely empowers Indigenous voices or perpetuates extractive practices. Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, ethical review, and governance models, we highlight the need for community-driven digital storytelling platforms that prioritise Indigenous agency. Rather than adapting Indigenous narratives to fit mainstream digital spaces, this research advocates for technologies shaped by Indigenous epistemologies—ensuring that digital storytelling serves as a means of cultural resurgence and relational accountability rather than a tool of knowledge extraction
Design in Service of the Pluriverse (Anonymised)
No full textThe pluriverse represents an entanglement of cosmologies shaped by coloniality and modernity (Mignolo, 2013). Service design\u27s historical roots trace back to exploitative systems, evident in both slavery\u27s triangular trade and domestic service hierarchies. Even the etymology—\u27service\u27 from servitus (slavery)—reflects a problematic legacy (Kim, 2018). These historical power dynamics persist in contemporary service design through gendered and racialized divisions, exploitative supply chains, and hierarchical service environments (Prendiville, 2024; Allen 2019; Inikori, 2002; Williams, 1994). Service design practices can either challenge or reinforce these dynamics, as demonstrated in Bitner\u27s servicescapes theory and Clatworthy or Vink’s analysis of design\u27s cultural and social impact. This positions designers as active agents who can perpetuate or transform existing power structures in service relationships