Hello All involved in the service design thread,
I’ve been following this with interest not least because I’ve taught a few modules on this topic to product design students. But the discussion so far does not mirror my understanding of one of service design’s motivating themes, the lessening of the material intensity of consumerism. This was services in its “lease/share” versus “own” sense. I recall that some research showed that it didn’t always, or necessarily, reduce material resource use.
I looked at Nicola's “services” wiki and see that a number of the UK cases involve health care services, with much more emphasis on building social capital and generating social innovation (surely the next big thing) than on how products or material objects support or enable services, or how services reduce material use. From a sustainable design standpoint, and aside from any financial considerations, I think the purpose of social innovation/social capital is a worthy one, alongside reducing the material intensity of daily life.
But in terms of products supporting or becoming services, I think an interesting case is MIT’s city car concept (see http://web.mit.edu/francov/www/citycar/ or http://cities.media.mit.edu/projects/citycar.html). It seems to make painfully clear both the promise and the problems of services in product terms. The car itself is entirely redesigned for a “service” use (it stacks up like a shopping cart etc.) and Mitchell talks about how the design team also thought a lot about the “cool” or potentially “uncool” factor associated with the car. But it requires an infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist. There is so often this infrastructural hang-up.
Aside from infrastructure, to get people into this type of scheme a big factor that seems to be missing is not “automation” but rather, enlivening the notions of “hospitality” (think, perhaps, of staying at a nice hotel) and/or “community” (think, perhaps, of a pub where everyone knows your name). As mentioned, there seems to be a degree of social capital underlying these services and this is one area where designers (and their instructors?) seem to fall short at the moment.
RE the question about research on complexity and design. I have a group of colleagues at the Open University that looks specifically at this issue (see http://design.open.ac.uk/research/complexity_science.htm).
Best,
Ann
Ann Thorpe
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Dept of Design, Development, Environment & Materials
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB, United Kingdom
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book: The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability (http://www.designers-atlas.net)
& blog: http://designactivism.net
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