Have you heard? Design is changing again; or rather, still. In the last three years we have seen the notion of‘ services beyond products’ sweep through the European design discourse, with a message that, this time, something radically new is happening. Academia, the professional practice and education are all trying to cope with this new design focus and how it affects their business opportunities. Looking at the new‘ design speak’, these changes seem immense. But are they really?
No
No, they’ re not. In design education, we’ ve become used to an ever-increasing multidisciplinarity of what goes into design. In the past two decades, we have seen this with interaction design, experience design, contextual design, and empathic design( to mention just a few of the‘ trends’). Elements from all of these have found their way into our basic design education programmes. This focus on services is yet another broadening of the educational scope. However, the fundaments of design remain unchanged: understanding people’ s lives, finding technological options, imagining futures, and developing viable solutions. Whether this involves a product, an experience, a service, a system, or a combination of these, the‘ end result’ does not define the activities, as it once may have done for craftsmen, where a furniture maker works in different ways to a potter. yes
Yes, the changes are for real. The fact that we are used to changing doesn’ t mean there is nothing to change. The focus on‘ services beyond products’ brings a growing complexity to the understanding of what is considered‘ a viable solution’. When developing these solutions, aspects of business models and an understanding of how to shape the organisation that provides services( or orchestrates them) become necessary ingredients of the discourse, and therefore part of the skills and toolset of the designers active in this area. Designers will not develop services or product-service combinations on their own( which is not to say that they often developed products entirely on their own). Designers will need to clarify what value they can add, because the persisting popular notion of a‘ designer’ is that of a stylist who can add some veneer after the big thinking has been done. In Delft, we believe that the designers we educate are primarily masters of developing new concepts for the future.
The message to services in design EDUCATIon is clear: You will be assimilated.