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The Role of Consumers in the Retail Design Process
No full textMarketing and design emphasise consumer-centricity and advocate for a participatory, co-creative role for consumers. However, retail designers often view consumers as constraints with limited influence on store design. A literature review analysing retail design from a consumer perspective reveals three key approaches: brand-based frameworks, which align retail design with brand identity; handover-based frameworks, which incorporate consumer insights in a design brief; and empathy-based frameworks, focused on understanding consumers through iterative design. In these frameworks consumer participation remains minimal. Barriers to greater involvement are largely linked to the role of the designer. The review suggests that a more creative and participatory role for consumers in the design process could lead to more customized, meaningful experiences and make retail spaces more consumer-centric. A proposed 5-level ladder of consumer involvement offers a tool for aligning retail challenges with appropriate levels of consumer participation, enhancing consumer-centric design in retail spaces
Reimagining Empty Retail Spaces: Sustainable Potential for Pedestrian Streets Facing Retail Decline
No full textRapid and significant reductions in global carbon emissions are needed to remain within Earth’s limits. The construction and operation of buildings account for the largest share of the global consumption of raw materials, and they yield around 40% of global carbon emissions. Leading climate researchers therefore recommend adapting housing needs to existing building stock instead of constructing new buildings. This requires shifting the focus from what we desire to how we can adapt our needs to existing spaces. In addition to challenges with lowering carbon emissions, this paper, a work in progress, highlights two significant but unconnected challenges observed in several provincial towns in Denmark. First, the issue of empty retail spaces in pedestrian streets due to changing retail strategies and consumer habits; second, the issues of exploiting the untapped potential for tourism existing in some of these provincial towns, which requires attractive tourist accommodation. The aim of this paper is to explore if and how three issues can be addressed through one solution: Reducing carbon emission through build environments by using the existing building stock, revitalizing town centres struggling with empty retail spaces, and accommodating tourists without increasing carbon footprint. Rather than constructing new accommodation for tourists, we suggest transforming vacant retail spaces into holiday apartments, boutique hotels, and other types of places that can support sustainable urban development, and strengthen the local community, the local businesses, and the tourist appeal. Through a novel combination of analytical perspectives, this paper lays a foundation for further research into how retail spaces in pedestrian streets can be transformed in a manner that both tourists and locals find appealing
Designing from Aidagara: A study of cultural philosophy and service design norms
No full textThis study explores holistic system design rooted in Japanese cultural philosophy and its implications for service design (SD). Focusing on concepts such as aidagara (relationality) and pure experience, the research examines how traditional practices including Washoku and Makunouchi bento, embody interdependence, contextual sensitivity, and non-dualistic perception. These philosophies offer an alternative to Western design paradigms, which emphasize linearity, objectivity, and reductionism. Through case studies, this paper analyzes Japanese aesthetic and social practices as models for inclusive, sustainable service ecosystems. The study contributes to the Pluriverse by broadening the epistemological foundations of SD and highlighting culturally grounded strategies for sustainability
Congruence of Futures Thinking and Service Design Enabled by Artificial Intelligence
No full textAs emerging technologies, societal trends, and evolving customer needs continue to reshape industries, service design must cater to longer-term future-oriented challenges. Service design involves proposing desirable solutions, and depending on the timescale considered, this shares similarities with speculative design and futures studies. Designers still find it difficult to use such approaches, tending towards conventional design, further impeded by organizational resistance. The synergy between futures thinking and service design remains underexplored. As artificial intelligence (AI), and other transformative technologies evolve, there is a potential to support design practices that anticipate and address future challenges. This paper explores how principles of futures thinking can be meaningfully integrated into service design practice through a quasi-speculative approach informed by conventional futures studies methodologies. It is grounded in challenges observed in our service design practice, particularly two of our design cases that were future oriented. We expect this approach can support service designers and organizations overcome resistance to futures methods and enhance the relevance of service design in projects with extended time horizons
A Study of Traffic Management Solutions and Emergency Vehicle Response Times in India
No full textIndia, the land of diversity, with a population of approximately 1.4 billion, is one of the fastest growing major economy in the world. The data of 2023- 2024 reveals that India produced a total of 28 million vehicles, including passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, and quadricycles and sold 23.86 million domestically. This is where the fault lies, there are lakhs of vehicles produced and supplied carelessly, but there are no policies that check and implement a smooth, technology-driven and user- friendly traffic management system. Moreover, it is observed that there exists a vacuum not only at a policy implementation level but also at the level of the citizens/commuters, who lack awareness and appropriate skills to respond to normal and emergency traffic situations. Thus, this study explores the potential ways to raise community awareness with regards to a more streamlined and integrated-emergency vehicle movement in traffic management. Also, the paper attempts to explore potential interventions through a system design approach. The methodology used for this study is representative of an ethnographic approach conducted at high-traffic intersections across major parts of Hyderabad, India. This is complemented by a mixed-methods strategy. The toolkit for this method includes google form-based surveys, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, direct on-site observations of traffic behavior, and system observation to understand how existing traffic management infrastructure such as signal timing, sensor responsiveness, and coordination protocols operates under real-world conditions. The research strategies enable a thorough analysis of commuter behaviour, system inefficiencies in traffic signal management, response patterns of drivers to emergency vehicles, and the overall effectiveness of current traffic infrastructure in handling high-density scenarios. This examination allows a more responsive approach towards the study itself. The research seeks to propose an intelligent, real-time traffic management system that ensures optimisation of traffic discipline, strengthens emergency response and reduces response times
From Affirmative-technological to Critical-humanistic Tech Trends: A speculative Framework for Service Design Futures
No full textThis paper presents a speculative framework for service design education, practice, and research in light of emerging technologies. It examines the evolution of service design through stages, from its foundations to a “thinking” era, and proposes a model for “Service Design 2.0” that considers industry-led, human-centred, and information driven approaches. The paper explores future trends in service design practice, emphasizing socio-technical systems thinking and learning systems. Design research is discussed in terms of evolving user-designer interactions, moving toward symbiotic relationships where designing and using become intertwined. Finally, the paper advocates for a balanced design education that integrates arts, engineering, computer science, and humanities, while also introducing Critical Design not merely as a counter-perspective, but as a vital mode of inquiry for questioning the ideological assumptions embedded in socio-technical systems. The study considers both affirmative-technological and critical-humanistic outlooks
Adopting a diffractive approach to journey mapping in the exploration of scaling citizen assemblies in Sweden
No full textScaling citizen assemblies to increase their impact on sustainable transitions requires situated knowledges. Whilst service design methods can support local governments in working with situated knowledges, there has been a call for more reflection on their application. In contrast to reflection, the feminist metaphor of diffraction enables greater relationality, complexity, and impact within research; yet it remains a novel approach. This paper presents an experiment with participants of a city-level citizen assembly in Sweden. During the experiment, journey mapping was used within a diffraction apparatus, and diffractive reading enabled the collective exploration of barriers to and opportunities for scaling citizen assemblies. This diffractive approach enabled plurality to be explored, complexity to be visualised, and shifted the researcher’s position, increasing participants’ power over their voice. Further research is recommended to explore how diffraction and service design can mutually benefit each other to facilitate sustainable transitions
Migration Narratives as Generative Data Visualization: Iranian Migration Stories
No full textThe Iranian migration context, rich with cultural and socio-political layers, presents a compelling case for generative design, where algorithmic processes and sensory elements create immersive representations. This paper explores the generative design process in visual storytelling, focusing on Iranian migration narratives as a case study. Through projects such as Synesthesia, Typographic Narratives, and CommUnity, this research translates complex qualitative data into interactive, visual experiences. This approach highlights data’s role as experiential knowledge, fostering a deeper public understanding of the emotional and temporal aspects of migration. By embedding culturally specific themes into generative design, this work presents data as a medium that allows audiences to actively engage with migration narratives, transforming the viewing experience into a shared empathetic journey. Synesthesia translates migrant audio narratives into evolving visuals, allowing audiences to feel the journey’s emotional highs and lows through dynamic color and motion. Typographic Narratives captures identity’s fluidity by adapting text in real-time, reflecting migration’s ongoing impact on self-perception. Finally, CommUnity leverages interaction to reveal community’s stabilizing effect, using motion sensors to transform chaotic visuals into coherent text when viewers connect. The study’s interdisciplinary approach combines data, art, and technology, emphasizing generative design’s transformative capacity to bridge cultural narratives with visual storytelling. By translating qualitative data into interactive visuals, generative design enables audiences to become active participants rather than passive observers, encouraging an empathetic connection to themes of identity, resilience, and community. This research highlights generative design’s relevance in creating inclusive, accessible cultural narratives and broadens the discourse on data-driven artistic expression. Future applications could expand this method across other socio-cultural themes, demonstrating generative design’s potential to engage audiences with culturally complex experiences and fostering empathy across diverse communities
Situated Truths: Models of Interpretation in Designing with Data
No full textDesign work today is often found situated in multifaceted, interdisciplinary projects that attempt to address real world issues. Designers are useful in this pursuit as they act as agents who seek ways to use data to connect, synthesize, visualize, and interpret such issues in ways that are not as bound to disciplinary structures. As a counterpoint to the solution-centric, rationalist approach to design where the responsibility of the designer lies primarily in service to the development of well-rehearsed forms that manifest an implied underlying truth to data as given, this paper takes the position of recentering the experience and situatedness of designers, collaborators, and data through project outcomes that incorporate additional models of interpretation. Designers can humanize the experience of both seeking solutions and offering them in a way that foregrounds experience and the myriad forms of interpretation. Drawing from theory on the critical hermeneutics of design, I explore how designers have fostered and practiced models of interpretation, using historical and contemporary examples of designing with data, as text, to show the benefits of work that raises such models of interpretation, not necessarily in opposition, but as equal to solution-based practice. In particular, I emphasize co-creativity, openness, play, and experience as components of such an approach to design work that lends itself to innovative poetic forms that lead to action. I conclude with an example of how I am applying interpretive design to new community driven interdisciplinary projects that seek social and environmental justice through data literacy and data justice