Given how new service design is as a practice — and how much newer it is as a sub-field of design in the academy — I actually can't say I am surprised. 

Especially when you consider, by contrast, how little impact assessment is conducted in the entire development field (at roughly $100 billion a year in the context of the Millennium Development Goals), which has very much the same ostensible aims (i.e. working in particular communities with transformational aims).

In fact, measuring the impact of social programs — especially those not easily measurable in terms of "units served" — is also terribly new.

I think you will find a very broad, very deep literature with thousands of concerned people working on these very areas in subjects such as development, peace and conflict (in particular "peace and conflict impact assessment, or PSIA) and various sub-fields in anthropology (among other areas).

If you're curious, the first piece linking service design, peace and security, and the notion of community transformation is here:

http://thepolicylab.academia.edu/DerekBMiller/Papers/826909/The_security_needs_assessment_protocol_improving_operational_effectiveness_through_community_security 

And the audio recordings of the big conference on the subject are here:

http://www.unidir.org/bdd/fiche-activite.php?ref_activite=384

Thanks for the article. Will look at it.

Derek
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On Oct 12, 2011, at 10:46 AM, Daniela Sangiorgi wrote:

> Dear all
> I have also been quite impressed how little evaluation of impact there is today on service design projects working in particular within communities and with transformational aims.
> I have been working in Service Design research for a bit and am trying to integrate as much as possible knowledge from social and behavioral sciences for my own understanding and for students as well, to fill fill this gap. My recent article on the International Journal of Design is exploring some of these issues http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/940/338
> 
> Hope this contributes to the discussion
> Best wishes
> Daniela
> 
> ______________________
> 
> Daniela Sangiorgi, PhD
> Imagination@Lancaster
> Lancaster University
> 
> tel 0044 (0)1524 510877
> www.imagination.lancaster.ac.uk
> www.servicedesignresearch.com
> 
> Design for Services book out!
> http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9780566089206
> 
> 
> On 12 Oct 2011, at 07:05, Ken Friedman wrote:
> 
>> Geez, Dori,
>> 
>> You must have missed the point of Don Norman's two articles, the earlier article on how design education must change and the recent article on brilliance without substance. One problem in our field is that many designers who use design as a social tool are failing to achieve the goals they seek to achieve because they lack the skills they need.
>> 
>> Design as a social function is an applied social science. To the degree that design is an applied social science, as Don argues, then we actually need to know what our goals ought to be, how to achieve them, and we need to measure whether we have done what we think we have done.
>> 
>> The reason we discuss education on this list is simple: this is a list about doctoral education in design. The PhD is a research degree. The purpose of earning a PhD is to learn, among other things, to use tools that enable us to find ways actually to do what we think we are doing and to find out whether we have done it.
>> 
>> The situation of design today is the situation of medicine in the 19th century. Doctors were vocational practitioners. Despite the fact that they took the Hippocratic Oath, medicine generally did more harm than good. It was only after Abraham Flexner reformed medical education that we moved to research as the foundation of medicine that began to cure more people than it harmed. Today, a century on, evidence-based medicine does far more good.
>> 
>> If you want to argue that the PhD is harming the ability of designers to make beautiful things, I would say that this is debatable but you'd have the right to make the argument. If you argue that research training and a PhD impedes the ability of designers to engage in design as a social function, the evidence suggests you are wrong. 
>> 
>> To this, I'll refer to Derek Miller's posts -- The Policy Lab actually engages in design as a social function, and they do so by understanding appropriate goals, developing methods to achieve them, and reviewing what they have done to see if they have achieved those goals. This requires research, and it requires evidence-based practice. In applied social science, learning to do this rather than simply aspiring to do good is the purpose of the PhD. 
>> 
>> Yours,
>> 
>> Ken
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:25:44 +0200, Halldor Gislason <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>>> I must admit that this on the whole is a very sad discussion. One: does PhD damage design and Two: does design understand what PhD is!?
>>> A discussion about education and processes rather than design itself as a field of activism in society. I must admit that very many are over excited about PhD issues rather than what design is as a social function. This is sad and has nothing to do with how designers are active in developing new horizons for design as a social tool.
>>> But great to see it for many to understand better how PhD programs are changing and damaging good design activity and maybe the best result is to stop using the word 'design' for one's work.
>>> Dori
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Professor Halld�r G�slason,
>>> Oslo National Academy of the Arts