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AI enabled Service Design Approach - Demystifying the myths
No full textThere has been a recent surge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption globally across industries. This has triggered widespread discussions about role of AI, particularly in design and creative fields. There are numerous opinions, findings and myths surrounding AI\u27s role, capabilities, and limitations in general and in design too. This paper explores these prevalent myths and demystifies those by conducting a comprehensive literature review and offering insights from practical experiences. From our experience of using AI in different ways in varied service design projects, we argue about certain common myths about AI’s potential. We highlight where AI excels, where it falls short, and how it can be effectively integrated into service design practice and enhance overall service design process. We believe this research provides clarity and guides design practitioners in making informed decisions about integrating AI into their workflows, eventually developing a more balanced and pragmatic approach to its application
Power Compass: a template for navigating power in service design
No full textService designers often encounter power dynamics that shape their role in enabling change. This study explores how and why designers experience power in practice, drawing on ecological systems theory (EST) to map experiences gathered through a case study of five focus groups with international practitioners. Leverage analysis is then used to conceptualise these insights. By intersecting these two frameworks, we developed the Power Compass - a project-centred template that visualises how social, political, and ecological forces converge in design projects, revealing power as both a source of agency and a constraint. The template aims to support designers in identifying, analysing, and navigating power structures throughout a project’s life cycle. The Power Compass serves as a boundary object and inquiry tool used among the various actors involved in the project, offering potential application beyond service design. We therefore invite further evaluation and contextual adaptation of the tool, concept, and its application
Redesigning Equine Air Transport: A Product-Service System to Empower the Horse-Owner Alliance
No full textEquine air transport poses significant health, and welfare risks due to stress and environmental factors. Current systems lack proactive solutions, leading to preventable health issues like Shipping Fever (SF) and poor service experiences. Design Challenge: This research explores how Product-Service System Design (PSSD) can mitigate common transport challenges, enhance stakeholder experiences, and reposition the Horse-Owner Alliance (HOA) as a key player. Methods: Using a mixed-methods approach, the study examined system, service, and product levels, integrating UX/UI, product design, and PSSD methods, alongside elements of System Design. Prototypes—including a smart stall and a wearable halter—were tested in real-world settings. Results: The study developed an integrated monitoring system, combining physiological tracking, environmental sensing, and SF risk prediction. These innovations enable real-time monitoring, proactive risk management, and greater HOA involvement, ultimately improving equine welfare and service quality
Resilient by Design: the Dissolution of Alternative Food Networks
No full textAlternative food networks (AFNs) are often presented through peak-period success stories, leaving their entire lifecycle — transformations, challenges, and reconfigurations — underexplored. By rethinking AFN dissolution process through a service design lens, this study examines how embedded values, networks, and operational models evolve beyond their initial structures. The research uses a new generation consumer cooperative as a case study, and it employs multiple sources of evidence — semi-structured interviews, archival data, media sources, and direct observations — to analyze the cooperative’s evolution. Findings reveal how AFNs transition from grassroots initiatives to structured models but struggle with economic constraints and governance challenges. Their dissolution underscores their structural fragility as interdependent networks sustain and destabilize their viability. Yet, rather than signaling failure, dissolution enables transformation, with core values and operational knowledge remaining in new configurations. This perspective aligns with service design principles of adaptability, participatory governance, and systemic resilience, offering insights into how AFNs can maintain impact amid evolving socio economic conditions
How Do Design Students Use Data in Physicalization Courses?
No full textData physicalization provides a hands-on approach to making data tangible, yet how students interpret and integrate data remains underexplored. This study examines three master level courses, analyzing how students incorporated data into their projects. Through critically reflecting on the course process and reviewing three student projects, we illustrate the evolving roles of data. We observed that data served multiple functions, including providing foundational knowledge, inspiring concepts, informing material choices, guiding ideation, and supporting narrative-driven designs, while also presenting challenges in processing and integration for students with limited data handling experience. We discuss the evolving roles of data in design education and the importance of contextualization through data in design pedagogy
Post-Futures: A Speculative Design Method Integrating Data Fiction for Design-Futures Education
No full textDesigning for the future presents numerous challenges, primarily because the future is inherently uncertain. Factors such as unknown environmental contexts, potential feasibility constraints, and evolving user needs complicate the task of designing for the unknown. Speculative design attempts to envision future worlds and the artifacts that might inhabit them; however, traditional data-based speculations often fall short when addressing long-term futures. This paper elaborates on the concept of data fictions, data that is imagined to exist in future scenarios and emerges from speculative inquiries about potential futures. Through its explanatory role it facilitates speculations on future worlds, where data is unavailable. We propose the application of data fictions through a novel 6-step Post-Futures Method, an innovative approach for design education that engages with far-fetched future speculations by using science fiction films as a source of data fictions. It guides through identifying signals, recognizing trends, and analyzing this data in order to envision future worlds and the artifacts situated within them. The method was tested during a project in an integrated design bachelor\u27s course in Germany, and this paper will describe the design process and the results. This paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on integrating data into the speculative design process. It proposes a novel strategy for engaging with data in the context of design futures to facilitate future speculations. Thereby it enhances the creativity and foresight in design education and introduces a cumulative approach in design education
Relational design for more-than-human narratives
No full textThis workshop explores the intersection of relational design, storytelling, and more-than-human perspectives to challenge anthropocentric assumptions and foster deeper ecological awareness. Through speculative and sensory-based design interventions, participants will engage with local edible wild plants, highlighting their agency and cultural significance. By addressing the phenomenon of plant blindness and incorporating multimodal storytelling, the session aims to reframe human-nature relationships, cultivating empathy and care for non-human entities. Participants will co-create speculative narratives, experiment with sensory engagement, and develop ethical frameworks for more regenerative design practices. The workshop encourages designers and researchers to rethink their roles, embracing interdependence, sustainability, and justice in design
Slack Lines: Comprehending Grace in Entangled Worlds
No full textDesigners increasingly celebrate more-than-human entanglement, touch, hybridity and care as antidotes to ecological devastation and animal exploitation. However, embroiling other animals in human realms can be a kiss of death for the animal. How is grace – careful and creative moves away from the other – possible in entangled worlds? Through the design experiment Fishwatching – a reconfigured angling setup where you catch fish on camera instead of on a hook – I articulate four tensors for comprehending grace in interdependent relational design: the taut line of human supremacy, the severed line of emancipation and the constricting net of entanglement. Finally, the slack line lets designers oscillate between standing with the other in solidarity and graciously leaving the other be
Pollino: A research-through-design approach to pollinator conservation
No full textThis paper examines how design can foster multispecies cohabitation in urban environments by supporting wild pollinators, specifically solitary wild bees. Grounded in theories of more-than-human design and multispecies care, the project challenges conventional human-centric urban planning by integrating ecological insights into practical interventions. Using a Research-through-Design approach, the project “Pollino” was developed as an experimental urban intervention that incorporates pollinator-friendly nesting habitats into public infrastructure. The interdisciplinary project draws on stakeholder interviews with ecologists, urban planners, and municipal decision-makers, along with a one-year pilot study deploying twelve prototypes in diverse urban settings and monitoring their impact on urban biodiversity and public engagement. Preliminary findings reveal that habitat quality influences pollinator activity and indicate that Pollino improves urban habitat connectivity. This work contributes to a reimagined urban design paradigm by bridges the gap between scientific knowledge and lived urban experience, promoting multispecies cohabitation in our rapidly evolving cities