Celebrating outstanding Service Design work from students across Switzerland

The Best Student Service Design Project Award 2025 shines a light on the most impactful and inspiring student-led Service Design projects completed in Switzerland between June 2024 and June 2025.

Meet the jury

The 2025 jury for the Best Student Service Design Project Award brought together two passionate Service Design educators with strong roots in both practice and academia. Their diverse backgrounds ensured a thoughtful and balanced evaluation of this year’s submissions.

Nils Solanki is a Service Design educator and breathwork specialist who teaches at FHGR and HKB, and works with organisations like Swiss Post.

Emmanuel Fragnière is a professor at HES-SO Valais and director of the CAS in Treasury Management, with a research focus on service design in energy and tourism.

Meet the participants

Discover this year’s winning projects and the brilliant minds behind them. Explore how they tackled complex challenges, engaged with communities, and brought human-centered solutions to life.

Insideout Together by Cathy Man Io Lai

Building a support network between asylum seekers and local community in Canton Schwyz through a strength-based approach 

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

My project is a good example of service design because it centres on co-creation, systems thinking, and social impact:

1. User-Centered from All Sides: I am designing with asylum seekers, local communities, volunteers, and institutions—not just for them. That participatory approach reflects service design's commitment to empathy and inclusion.
2. Identifying and Matching Needs: My method of mapping and aligning skills and needs among stakeholders is a service design move, because it reveals hidden potentials, fosters collaboration and enhances system efficiency.
3. Creating Sustainable Interactions: I am not building a one-off product. I am designing relationships and networks that can grow and evolve. 
4. Piloting and Iteration: By testing my concept at the asylum centre Degenbalm in Morschach, I am applying a prototype mindset, learning from real-world interaction before scaling. That iterative process is a key to successful service design.
5. Multi-Stakeholder Ecosystem: Navigating between asylum seekers, NGOs, volunteers, and local groups requires strategic orchestration. It is a complex but essential part of systemic service design."

About Cathy

Cathy is a service design practitioner from Macau with a background in journalism, where she focused on human rights and social justice. Now based in Switzerland, she is studying Eco-Social Design at Hochschule Luzern. Her current project fosters connections between asylum seekers and local communities in rural areas. It aims to build mutual understanding and support through creative, community-driven initiatives.

Credits

• Institution: HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
• Supervisors: Daniele Catalanotto, Andreas Unteidig
• Teachers: Karin Fink, Jan-Christoph Zoels 
• Classmates: Tetyana, Karel, Jannie, Anja, Iris, Mariam 
• Research Assistant: Kevin Alldis

Exploring Paths to Mental Health Through Mountain Trails by Tetyana Kalyuzhna

Harnessing Nature and Reflection for Sustainable Emotional Growth

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

This project transforms hiking trails into a playful, analog service for emotional resilience. Through kits, maps, and sensory exercises tested in real workshops, it invites users to reflect, play, and grow. Designed for diverse users, co-created the service experience based on users needs during the "walkshops", it connects mental well-being, local landscapes, and quiet rituals of self-care. Rooted in co-creation and systems thinking, it’s a low-tech, inclusive, and scalable service — turning nature into a soft, supportive space for inner work.

About Tetyana

I’m Tetyana, a visual designer from Ukraine with a background in book illustration. For the past three years, I’ve focused on graphic and service design. I study part-time at Hochschule Luzern while working with museums, publishers, and scientists. Passionate about mountains, hiking, storytelling, and mushrooms, I dream of creating eco-tourism services rooted in narrative and nature.

Credits

• Institution: HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
• Professor: Daniele Catalanotto, Bianca Herlo, Christoph Zellweger, Axel Vogelsang.

2+ Culture by Amin Sharq

Bridging Cultures Through Communication & Play.

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

This project applied Service Design to co-create solutions with over 80 second-generation Iranian immigrant families in Switzerland. Instead of designing for users, the project focused on designing with them — especially with children — which led to more meaningful and effective results.

Over a period of eight months, I held weekly 90-minute sessions with eight children aged 7 to 11, using playful and expressive methods such as LEGO play, storytelling, drawing, and role-playing. These creative interactions directly shaped the final outputs: a set of interactive card games and a digital app prototype designed to strengthen emotional communication and cultural identity.

The overall process also included in-depth qualitative research, workshops with parents, and collaboration with psychologists. The resulting service addresses emotional, linguistic, and cultural gaps within immigrant families, helping to foster belonging and intergenerational connection. This project demonstrates how participatory Service Design can empower marginalized communities and create sustainable, user-centered systems that truly reflect their lived experiences.

About Amin

Amin is a Service Design student at Lucerne University with a background in Industrial Design. His thesis explores how playful tools and emotional language can support second-generation immigrant families in building cultural identity and connection. He works with parents, children, and psychologists to co-design analog and digital tools that foster belonging and dual-language learning.

Credits

Special thanks to the 83 Iranian families who generously shared their stories and insights, to the psychologists who contributed to workshop facilitation especially Aida Mahmoudi, child psychologist and to my academic mentors at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, in particular Catalanotto Daniele, for their continuous support and guidance throughout the project.

Skill Swap by Karel Adaimi

A hybrid service that helps students offer and request skills through physical and digital touchpoints.

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

The project responds to a common issue on campus: students have skills to offer, but no system to share or exchange them. Using service design methods such as research, mapping, prototyping, and iteration, it led to a hybrid solution combining physical, digital, and social touchpoints. It demonstrates how service design can support informal collaboration and make everyday support between students more visible and human.

About Karel

Karel Adaimi has a background in graphic design and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Service Design at HSLU. Her work bridges visual communication and human-centered design, with a focus on creating collaborative and thoughtful experiences that bring people together.

Credits

• Institution: HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
• Professor: Daniele Catalanotto

Menopause Mindset by Idoia Pau

Innovating Menopause Care: A Service Design Perspective on CBT and Remote Self-Guided Services for Managing Symptom Complexities and Enhancing Mental Health.

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

Meno Mindset is a good example of Service Design because it looks beyond just a single product; it considers the whole experience women go through during menopause. I didn't want to design something that tracks symptoms; I wanted to create something that genuinely supports women and their partners in feeling seen, informed, and connected.

Rather than focusing solely on a digital product, the project maps out the broader ecosystem of needs, emotions, and relationships that surround women during this life stage. It integrates multiple touchpoints, a digital app, and a physical kit, grounded in co-creation with real users, partners, and healthcare professionals.

I involved users from the start, listening to their stories, frustrations, and hopes, and keeping them close throughout the process. That led to a solution with both digital and physical touchpoints because real life happens across both. For me, Service Design is about designing with people, not just for them, and that’s exactly what this project is about.

About Idoia

Idoia is a service and UX designer with a passion for healthcare, gender equity, and innovation. She just wrapped up her Master’s at HSLU and currently designs digital tools for toxicological risk assessment, working closely with scientists, developers, and regulators. She's an advocate for people-first, usable design and loves turning complexity into clarity, with a touch of beauty and purpose.

Credits

This project wouldn’t exist without the strength and wisdom of many. 

To my mom, thank you for your constant guidance and inspiration.

To Miyara, the women, guides, and experts who shared their stories, this project is shaped by your voices.

To my supervisor and peers, thank you for your support, feedback, and encouragement throughout.

Carechain by Maria Paula Mendez

Planning Motherhood.

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

This project applies Social Design to address systemic inequalities faced by Latin American migrant mothers in Switzerland. Through a deep research process grounded in real lived conditions, it identifies structural gaps in care. These insights led to a Service Design strategy: a scalable support model based on certified community leaders, multilingual tools, and a digital platform that connects informal networks with formal institutions.

About Maria Paula

Maria Paula is an Industrial Designer who recently completed a Master’s in Design with a focus on Social Design and a specialization in Research at HKB in Bern. Her thesis explored motherhood among Latin American migrant women. She graduated in January 2025.

Credits

• Institution: Hochschule der Künste Bern HKB
• Mentors: Karla Aerni-Gutierrez, Paola Pierri, Catalina Jonssen Cardozo, Beatrice Kaufmann.
• Service Design development in collaboration with: Catalina Jonssen Cardozo.

Empowering voices by Mariam-Sophie Karl

Participation as a catalyst for social innovation.

See project poster

Why is your project a good example of Service Design work?

The project showed me that to run and establish those change-making processes and indicators it needs work on many layers. Good research, communication, man power and also transform the leanings into something that can be used by others and empower them. Never the less the tool that came out in the end I hope can be one of those ones that support transformation processes towards a more participatory future. 

About Mariam

Mariam has a background as a communication designer and developed a practice of human-centric design with the focus on participatory processes in her service design studies. Her motivation is to foster an accessible democracy in which we respect the planetary (and human life).

Credits

• Institution: HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
• Professor: Jan-Christoph Zoels, Daniele Catalanotto, Karin Fink, Andreas Unteidig, Bianca Herlo
• Students: Felix Schultz, Anja Geissbergerová & many more