Service Design Research UK

Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge background and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society, if we think of how they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more people-centred and creative approach to service innovation, which is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges.
The UK is a leader in the development of Service Design, mainly driven by design practitioners (Engine, Livework, Thinkpublic, Participle, Snook, etc.) and organizations such as the Design Council, Design Wales, Demos, Young Foundation, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. In this scenario the academic contribution to the development of Service Design as a subject of research and practice has been instead weak and dispersed.
This network aims to:
1. Identify, compare and map current research work into Service Design in UK;
2. Increase understanding of and demand for Service Design as a practice and research field in UK;
3. Identify research and knowledge gaps in the field to inform PhD studies and future research projects collaborations and ideas;
4. Increase visibility and connectivity of SDR UK nationally and internationally.
The research network will create the opportunities, for the SDR UK's emerging research community, to converge around three main themes: 1) Service Design for Innovation; 2) Service Design for Social Good; 3) Service Design for Sustainability. Three thematic workshops will bring together academics, designers, public and private sector organizations and relevant institutions to collect and map the research work done till now, discuss project exemplars, share experiences and identify research gaps and future research themes. The workshops outcomes will be made available on a dedicated on-line platform, where the emerged research questions will be used to inform an on-line forum. SDR website will be linked with existing national and international initiatives and on-line communities related to the topics of service research and innovation. The international Service Design and Innovation (ServdDes) conference to be held at Lancaster University in April 2014, will host a final public event to present SDR UK results and to organize discussion tables around the emerged research themes to springboard possible future research collaborations.

Service Design is introducing a more human centred perspective on service innovation that could benefit the UK economy and society if better understood and supported. SDR will organise 3 thematic workshops with 30 participants each (academics, designers, relevant institutions and organisations) to map the field and illustrate with examples and research work what design can do for service innovation, social good and sustainability. Given these three thematic areas SDR UK network aims at generating impact in the public sector, private sector, third sector, local government and policy makers.
Private sector: the SDR network will target in particular SMEs given their limited design awareness (BIS 2011), but it will engage also with bigger service organisations. Access will be given to a wide range of established IT companies, SMEs as well as third sector organisations via the OS Geovation Challenge database. A specific target is also the design industry to introduce the potentials of service design as a new design consultancy area of application. Via the workshops and website resources, organizations will learn about alternative strategies and modes of thinking to service innovation to inspire their work and lead them to deepen their understanding of service design thinking. They will have the opportunity to participate in the discussion tables and on-line forums about future research collaborations and engage with PhD research that could open up opportunities for research and innovation. The network, by leveraging service design awareness in both designers and companies, will thereby increase the potential for collaborations and generate opportunities for companies to embed new skills, tools and innovation approaches. The resulting impact will therefore be an improved understanding of service design to address private sector service innovation, which will lead to new and improved offerings and higher competitiveness.
Public sector: the public sector needs to increase innovation capabilities to create more effective, efficient and people centred solutions. It requires creative methods to imagine and experiment with novel ways to engage the public to co-create services with fewer resources. The SDR network aims at engaging public sector organizations to learn from other project experiences, innovative service models, service design approaches and to access specific expertise in the field. Public sector organizations that have been working with designers will share their experience with peers, answering specific questions and contributing to the SDR knowledge map. Organisations will also have the opportunity to formulate research questions and needs, activate potential research collaborations with PhD students and research centres. The resulting impact will therefore be an improved understanding of service design to address public sector service transformation; this will lead to the design of innovative modes of service delivery and public engagement that will benefit the wider public in the longer term.
Local government and policy makers: The network will invite and connect with experts in policy making and research impact (i.e. Jane Tinkler, London School of Economics), with representatives from agencies engaged in innovation and design policy programmes (NESTA, Design Council, Design Wales, Young Foundation, Work Foundation, NHS Institute) and Local Governments to showcase potentialities and current limitations in the application and development of service design as a field of practice, also comparing the UK scenario with other international contexts. The Network will elaborate, as part of the white paper, synthetic design and research policy guidelines on how to better support and develop service design driven innovation in the UK economy and society. This will result in more informed and effective innovation programmes and improved policy on service design in local and central government.