went for the Degree Show in Dundee on Friday and find something very interesting in IPD (innovative prodcut design)... the three 'service design ' students that I talked to earlier in the semester have progressed well. Especially the idea of writ to the future has a strong potential to become a very interesting service system if developed a bit further. The text-order-music one is a bit pointless to me, maybe just because I am not a techy kind of persone...
It is quite funny that when students start to play with in this concept of 'service design', you see it turns from designing one product into designing many products... or one poster into a poster that shows on your mobile, on the wall and on the TV... something is missing there... eventhough I am not quite sure what is missing.
Compared with real-world practice, most of the student work stop in a conceptual level. The nature of inter-discipline in a 'service design' project somehow is lost if it stays in a conceptual level. Fundemantally it is the use of a service system that makes it valuable. By its nature, most of the services are produced simultaneously. Design ideas fail apart when it is produced, if the delivery system cannot work actively with the provider and consumer althoghter after implementation. Once designed, a product can be re-produced by machines at a certain quality guarantee. While service system have to be designed with a people system in mind. As for the education in service design, the people aspects as producers are still isolated from the design process.
For people as producer to be considered, the conceptual of management -- the science of organising people -- is inevitable here... that brings another level of complexity to the problem solving process... maybe 'service design' itself is really too complex and not possible to achive a full understanding at tha undergraduate level education... but I am still very happy to see students try to tackle such problems. Even the rising of such an awareness itself is healthy move to bring in fresh ideas...
I am very happy to see one of the service design solution is designed by a student coming to the Master of Design course next year... hope that she can carry the interest on 'service design' onto the master programme. It would be exciting to see people brings all these new thoughts into the research of service design!
