Social Animals

Parker S. and Campbell E.: RSA Design & Society. Social Animals: tomorrow’s designers in today’s world by Sophia Parker. A report on the RSA Design Directions project

“Service design is concerned with finding new ways of empowering people to take action themselves – designing people in to solutions, rather than ignoring their significance and designing them out; it is about seeing the social fabric of local communities as the site and source of solutions rather than the destination to which public services are delivered.”
-Sophia Parker

This publication fantastically highlights and recognises the explosion in service design and what it might mean for young, inexperienced practitioners. Importantly the publication asks about broadening students understanding of service design and design thinking to improve their understanding and ability to become involved in projects that move away from traditional ‘product’ design. I think service design and its methods hold great ways of teaching students what design can be about, rather than just material product and adds an emphasis on users and ‘getting out there’. When I taught service design to visiting students from America, they left with a feeling that they had learnt valuable tools and processes, even though they were engineering students. This publication runs through many of these themes in a concise and original manner.

Link to the report