Systemic Service Design

Systemic Service Design provides a comprehensive overview of how systems theories can be integrated into service design to address complex social-economic-technological challenges. Across 14 chapters split into two sections, the book connects theoretical backgrounds and practical worldwide case studies to explore various approaches to systems thinking.

The field of service design has evolved significantly in recent years, from focusing on touchpoints and user interactions to being seen as a driver for organizational transformation and increasingly, a key component in transdisciplinary spaces involving complex systems. However, while service design has grown over the past few decades, it has also recognized its limitations in addressing complex societal problems. For example, the book highlights how a lack of holistic understanding of the systems in place can lead to service failure, which ultimately results in societal issues relating to unemployment, healthcare, and public transportation. As such, this book offers theoretical and practical resources specifically tailored to service designers in order to equip them with the ability to develop solutions that are appropriate in scope, depth, and feasibility to address these complex issues. Contributing authors draw upon and integrate theories from related disciplinary fields to extend the contextualization of service design within complex systems, providing readers with more scientific frames of reference. The book also draws upon case studies from South and North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, to offer readers wide-ranging perspectives and real-life examples to further their understanding of systemic service design and demonstrate how to integrate it successfully.

The book delivers theoretical and practical knowledge for students and designers in the fields of service design, design for policy, social design, and additionally for managers, public and private sector planners, engineers, and politicians.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Mari Suoheimo is an Associate Professor of Service Design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway. Her main research focus is on how to approach wicked problems in service design. Suoheimo has publications in highly ranked journals and is also part of the editorial board of The Design Journal.

Peter Jones is a Distinguished Professor of Systemic Design at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City, and is also an Associate Professor at Toronto’s OCAD University. Dr Jones is editor‑in‑chief of the SDA journal Contexts and a co-founder of the Systemic Design Association. Jones is founder and managing partner of the design research firm Redesign Network. He has published four books and 50 peer-reviewed articles.

Sheng-Hung Lee is a designer and PhD researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AgeLab and MIT Ideation Lab and a board director at the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). While working at IDEO, he was inspired by multiple domains of knowledge and perspectives. Lee also serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Shih Chien University, Taiwan.

Birger Sevaldson is a Professor Emeritus at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and a design researcher who has developed a designerly approach to systems thinking in design called Systems Oriented Design. He is the founder of the 'Relating Systems Thinking and Design' symposium, a central contributor to the emergence of Systemic Design, and a co-founder of the Systemic Design Association. He is the author of Designing Complexity: The Methodology and Practice of Systems Oriented Design (2021).