Here's five things I thought to share from my recent trip to Europe...

1. We (the service design community) need to learn more from the discourse in participatory design. PD community seem to be far better attuned to human factors, more sensitive to power-dynamics and far more open to accepting the complex challenges in how to design with people (with more honesty, I thought). It was a great booster-tonic to be among people who'd been talking about this for the last 30 years..! I still have a lot more to learn...

2. This course in Service Design is fabulous - highly recommend to those wanting to do a Masters in Service Design in the UK. Alison Pendriville - who basically runs this course, collaborating with Lucy Kimbell - are truly awesome. It was great to see what they've been doing.

3. Design sector in the UK seem to be on the decline (reflected in a contraction in jobs/work), but service design, strangely seem to be doing ok, buoyed by the digital/on-line/TV opportunities. Apparently, there's a lot of job opportunities for those in service design / UX.

4. I think designing for/within a multi-cultural society will be an accentuated theme over the next few years. It sounds strange to us here or to those in the UK where it is an inherently multi-cultural society but this might be because design is so often dominated by the Western concepts that debunking or questioning dominant notions and including 'other cultures' is considered 'quite radical'...?

5. Australia - stop worrying about being the 'poor cousin' to Europe/US - we're doing great things over here in design. I kinda knew it, but it was great to have that confirmed again (by others too). It's just smaller, isolated and perhaps we don't get to share our stories with each other more often...? (note to self - what can SDN do to help)