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Transform your Customer Experience. Using the principles and tools of service design, rethink the journey your customers take.

Service Design Masterclass

Service Design Masterclass

Services represent around 80 per cent of the economy. Service design applies human-centric design principles to make services that are sustainable and desirable for changing consumer needs. It can be applied to all sectors ranging from retail and banking to transportation, health and education.

The Royal College of Art is a global pioneer in the teaching of MA-level service design and has successfully trained a new generation of practitioners who are delivering transformational ideas across business and government. Graduates have gone on to work for firms that include IDEO, Fjord, Engine, EY-Seren, Public Health England, Government Digital Services, Jaguar Land Rover, McKinsey.

In an age where product-based value is insufficient to satisfy customers, service design is a powerful discipline. This introductory executive masterclass will teach you how to apply practical tools for effective service design. Find out more on our website. Or book now.

Programme team

Programme team

Professor Clive Grinyer is the Head of Programme for Service Design, where he leads the development of this pioneering programme developing service transformations for business and the public sector.

Clive has led award-winning design teams developing services and customer experiences for companies around the globe. He started in design consultancy Ideo in London and San Francisco before co-founding design company Tangerine with Martin Darbyshire and future Apple design chief and RCA Chancellor Jony Ive. He went onto build and lead design teams for Orange, Samsung and Cisco and was Director of Service Design at Barclays, where he pioneered service design to transform financial services.

As Director for Design at the Design Council, he created the Design Demand programme taking design into over a thousand UK companies and as a consultant has worked with the Cabinet Office Policy Lab and at Nesta.

In 2018 Clive was named in Creative Review 's Top 50 as 'a passionate advocate for the transformational potential of design for some three decades. Today’s focus on the value of digital product design and on design’s value in leading customer experience in the UK is, in large part, due to his work.

Clive is an acknowledged expert in service design, design thinking, digital and technology innovation, speaks at national and international conferences, write articles and blogs and has published Smart Design, a book on design and technology. He was a trustee of the Royal Society of Arts and is Chair of the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards.

Nicolás Rebolledo is a strategic and service designer and Tutor: Design for Policy Platform Leader in Service Design at the Royal College of Art. His academic and professional practice is concerned with the development and implementation of design-led service innovation processes, with a focus on social and public sector innovation. He is co-founder of UNIT, the strategic design agency behind the inception and first innovation strategy of the Laboratorio de Gobierno de Chile.
He has worked as an independent strategic design consultant for a diverse range of start-ups, private companies, charities and public organisations. He has been visiting lecturer at UCL School of Management and Imperial College Business School. He is currently completing his PhD and leading the Design for Policy Platform.

Personal and organisational benefits

Personal and organisational benefits

The benefits to you and your organisation include:

  • access to global best practice in service design
  • learn empathic understanding of users/customers
  • return to your organisation with new techniques and strategies to put into practice
  • experience critical, creative and insightful thinking
  • interact and network with peers from different backgrounds and functions.

What will I learn?

You will learn:

  • How to apply service design methodology and frameworks to create better customer experiences
  • Real world applications of service design and how it is transforming organisations
  • Creative design techniques.

How will I learn?
The programme is delivered over two days and consists of three modules:

Module 1: Understanding and Discovery

  • Introduction to service design with examples of the impact of innovative services
  • Overview of service design methodology and approach
  • Gaining user insight – human-centred research methods, service safaris and other experiential research methods.


Module 2: Definition and Design

  • Customer journey mapping – understanding end-to-end experiences and the systems that create them, using ‘design thinking’ methodology and the double diamond framework
  • Setting a challenge – define a challenge and opportunity to bring service design to life
  • Learn creative design techniques – co-creation, brainstorming and concept creation
  • Visualising concepts and rapid prototyping – bringing concepts to life, storyboarding, sketching, role play and mock ups to visualise ideas and be ready to test with ourselves and end users.

Module 3: Concept Delivery and Measuring Success

  • Service blue-printing and delivering change across your organisation
  • Experimentation, prototyping and piloting for deployment
  • Presentation of design concepts, delivery plan and metrics for success.

Who should attend?

Anyone interested in transforming their organisation through the application of service design, including:

  • service delivery teams
  • private and public sector executives and senior managers
  • designers
  • entrepreneurs
  • innovation teams
  • customer experience and service commissioners.

Course duration: One and a half days, structured over two days

Day one: full day from 9.30am – 4.30pm, with networking drinks until 6pm
Day two: starts at 9.30am and finishes before lunch at 1.30pm, with an invitation to join a student-led tour of the RCA design studios at the end of the course.

Location: RCA Kensington
Fee: £1,200

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Disclaimer: The information given is accurate at the time of publication, however, the RCA reserves the right to amend the described courses as circumstances dictate.