Service Design Research at Huddle: Fabian and panel

Last Wednesday evening 21 March I attended the Service Design Network Melbourne event at Huddle Design offices to hear Fabian Segelström from Linköping University, Sweden speak on Service Design.

I arrived at the same time as the pizza man and was quickly ushered upstairs. I was pleased to see familiar faces including Fabian. He had been one of the active mentors at the Global Service Jam 2012 when I was there. I saw some other faces from Huddle including Cam, our host, Josh, Cat, and Allison and faces from the DESIS symposium the other week Yoko, Mark, Julia and Emma. (I am beginning to feel I am part of the service design community.) While there didn't seem enough time to mingle I managed to meet Kate and another Emma between mouthfuls of pizza and said hi to others like John and Will before we sat down.

Fabian gave a quick overview about what his PhD was about ...'Visualisations'. He emphasised he was one of the first few Service Design researchers in the world but there are rapidly becoming more. He said there were five main streams of research in Service Design. He said the book This is Service Design Thinking outlines work that has been done and to move onto the next step if you pick up research.

Fabian wasn't keen to do all the talking up front so a panel including Vanja (PhD Service Design researcher), Jared (Huddle) and Paivi (Swinburne Design Factory) overseen by Mark Strachan (Swinburne Lecturer) formed in front of our informal seated gathering.

Vanja, who is doing a PhD in Service Design says that getting into Service Design companies can be difficult and requires planning and paperwork like non-disclosure agreements (which is difficult when research is to be knowledge to be shared). She is doing case studies on Frog Design and Second Road. Fabian thought that getting into UK companies seemed to be difficult but had been able to do research in others like Huddle Design who were more open to research.

The audience was made up of those working in service design or a similar field, academics, and interested others. Some workers said their companies were generally unwilling to share outside, some tried to share within the company but there was often some difficulty. The panel fielded a few questions with each of the panel commenting.

Many were keen to stay longer than the 8pm close but others needed to get home so we finished up (a bit late) but still eager for more.