I always enjoy seeing my friend David Sless dropping into conversations on
various lists wisely pointing out repeating starting point initiatives and
provocatively tossing in the hand grenade of ³where¹s the ROI beef² however
I think the bigger question for the service design folks is what happens
when the challenge has nothing to do with service....for citizens, for
organizations, for societies?

When humans in many countries look out into their communities today they see
a lot of fuzzy complex challenges, the solutions to which are seldom more
product and service creation. Its not that product design and service design
are not legitimate activities but why would we want to confine design to
those kinds of roles? In who¹s interest is it to do so? Forget about masters
of the universe, how about just being useful in meaningful ways.

As far as we can see this is the journey that a new generation of designers
seeks to be on and frankly most graduate design schools are still not yet
reflecting much of that interest. That kind of change is going to be
uncomfortable to many. One can see a lot of acting out around change on
various discussion lists. Intimidation away from change has no place when
significant change is so obviously needed. Change is difficult, no question.
While service design is part of that meaningful seeking picture many have
already figured out that service design is not an adaptable enough platform.

It is easier for schools to package up and sell as an educational experience
but that¹s a different issue.

In a world that is in a state of constant change the challenge for design is
not just about scale, its also about adaptability. This might not be obvious
from the relatively stable realm of academia. There is nothing stable about
what¹s going on in the marketplace today. Teaching adaptability is different
than expecting the students to figure it out after they leave their
specialty program. I would love to hear from graduate or post graduate
design schools that are teaching adaptability at the point of teaching, not
assuming that adaptability will occur after.

By the way David: If your clients are asking that you define what you do in
the context of how your services will pay for themselves you probably need
to update your go-to-market strategy and likely even your services..:-)
Those kinds of questions are signs that your industry in your market is
being rapidly commoditized. Just another sign that it is not going to be
possible not to change. Change is not a theoretical idea today, its a
necessity. Welcome to globalization.

regards

...

GK VanPatter
Co-Founder

Humantific
SenseMaking for ChangeMaking

http://www.humantific.com


...


CoFounder
NextD 
Strategic Design Perspectives

New York
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