Most healthcare systems are attempting to deliver services that are efficient, effective, and value for money. To this end, there is a continual emphasis on how the delivery of services can be changed or improved.

Denis’ passion is to find new ways to use design methods to drive businesses. He likes to push the boundaries of integra-ting design into innovation.

Touchpoint spoke to a range of service organizations that have worked with service design agencies and universities from among the Service Design Network.

Service design is fundamentally about and for people. This has shaped the evolution of the discipline and will continue to do so. Lavrans Løvlie of service design pioneers, live|work looks at how designers can and must engage with the fundamental needs of people.

A business strategist and a service designer walk together into the lobby of a luxury hotel. What do they see?

"Service Design development since 1993 has been rapid. Agencies, academics, industries, and public service throughout the world now successfully apply design thinking and service design methodologies in order to improve and create new innovative services. [...]

Design is not about beautiful things. In Holland the word »design« has a different meaning than in many other countries. For us Dutch, »design« is often used to describe a product and not the process of design.

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you the first issue of »touchpoint«, the international Service Design Journal.

The belief ‘My home is my castle’ runs through our culture: it is about status, ownership, privacy and, ultimately, about who we are. And yet it seems that as we grow old and develop a need of care, we can no longer sustain the way we choose to live.

Digital services, such as Google Maps and Foursquare, are a fast-growing part of our daily lives. These services can be beneficial and much loved, like Amazon Prime, but poorly designed services can create bad feeling, causing customers to terminate brand relationships.

“A company’s primary responsibility is to serve its customers. Profit is not the primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company’s continued existence. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Nancy Birkhölzer and Melanie Wendland delivered a keynote at the National Service Design Conference organized by the German chapter of the International Service Design Network.

Growth is no value. When I started teaching in 1995 as the first-ever professor of service design, there was neither concept, framework nor curriculum for teaching and no market for service design.

As designers and innovators of services, we try to step into the shoes of those who will be using and delivering the services we create.

Practitioners and researchers are very much aware of the fact that we all live in a service economy. And, in particular, a service economy that must be endlessly innovative.

In most global companies there are competing interests that can be reduced to tensions between centralised strategy and local implementation. Finding a balance between a unified global presence and regional and local adaptation is one such challenge.