Advice on designing a postgraduate Service Design degree

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Permalink Reply by Yoko Akama on February 20, 2012 at 12:56

Hi Anna,

Sounds interesting - which institution are you doing this for? The only reason why I ask is that each institution (for example, where I work at RMIT) has a group of industry networks that act as an advisor to a program. Each year, they evaluate the relevance of a course, and are consulted when new ones are created. So, if there is such industry network associated where you are (or the institution you are doing this for), it can short-cut a lot of leg-work.

Also, you could look at the 'competitors' of your institution and see what they're offering. That's another way to benchmark what's going on. Some interesting ones I've had my eye on are (though my interest tends to be very socially-led, as opposed to purely business -led) Lewis Institute, Design for America, Design Management course at Parsons. If you have a look at these, they might give you more leads..?

Another thing you might be interested - the Australian Design Alliance had a conference/gathering two years ago and looked towards ways of creating greater advocacy for design. Their report was an interesting read - you can download it from their website.

Hope this helps ;-)

Yoko

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Permalink Reply by vanja misic on March 20, 2012 at 11:41

Hi Anna,

This is a very broad question and cannot be answered within a couple of written lines. If you are seeking to create a compelling coursework outline then it would be good to get involved with lectures at RMIT or Swinburne who have been involved with course plan creation. Depending on the background the employees have on service design or design thinking the course needs to adapt:

1. How much knowledge needs to be achieved, implicit knowledge creation and

2. Which skills the employee will have after each course

Aside from the actual knowledge you will have to create certain tools how you actually engage the employees to learn about service design or design thinking (workshops, projects longterm, short term, games, online tasks, papers etc).

Service Design comes from the design background and although it might be obvious due to the wording it takes time to understand what a design process is and time to be creative and produce valuable outcome.

Here is for instance an example how design thinking was incorporated in schools. It might give you an idea how you can start to set up a such an education process. 

http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/

It would be nice to get a bit more information about the company you are working for in order to give you more advise and maybe find the right people in the network you can talk to and help you out.

All the Best,

Vanja 

 

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Permalink Reply by Gavin Melles on March 20, 2012 at 11:54

Hi Anna

Pleast contact me at gmelles@swin.edu.au directly. I was advising Deloittes last week on their new D.School and have experience regarding this.

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Permalink Reply by Diahnne Berthold on July 11, 2012 at 7:45

Hi Anna,

I work for a management consultancy company and have a keen interest in "innovation in services" as you describe it. About 2 years ago I was trying to find a degree with this focus. At the time, the closest I found was Laurea University (Finland). They have a MBA in "Service Innovation and Design" (in english) http://servicedesign.laurea.fi/

I think the 'post-experience' approach is definitely the best way to go.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Diahnne

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