Self service revisited

Any conversation for designing for the future of product design will include a discussion on the importance of service design. In undergraduate education, students are becoming increasingly aware of the diminishing prospects for employment making physical products; and at the same time are looking towards the service economy as their future employers. Service lead industries have natural synergies with product design, drawing on methods and processes for user insights including, experience prototyping, usability evaluation and implementation. In September 2006 the authors presented a paper on the story of an industry led service design project for two product design programs in Scotland [1]. The brief provided an open-ended approach for students to design for services with wide-ranging solutions involving helping hands, community chests and a wandering hamster. Almost immediately following presentation and publication of this paper, the project was revisited and more clearly focused around the issues of providing financial services. Having developed through this second year of the project we were able to analyse the educational impact of industry leading education with some surprising results that show students challenging and inspiring both industry and educators a-like. We will reflect on the impact of viral learning across institutions and program development through industry's active engagement with product design education. At the heart of our paper is a discussion of the service design industry and its relationship to product design education.