The newly published Touchpoint Vol.10 No.1 represents a significant milestone! With this issue, Touchpoint enters its tenth year of publication, having first been published in early 2009.
Thanks to the tireless volunteer efforts of an ever-growing community of peer contributors and editors from around the world - supported by a small and dedicated production team - Touchpoint has moved from strength to strength.
While the general format has stayed the same, the level of discourse and the quality of insights it has helped disseminate throughout the community has grown alongside the discipline of service design itself.
While the first issue (Vol. 1 No. 1 “What is Service Design?”) really was about laying the groundwork for a discipline in its infancy, it’s interesting to see how some of the earliest issues were almost ahead of their time. Issues in September 2010 and September 2011 were already looking at the “Business Impact of Service Design” (Vol. 2 No. 2) and “Organisational Change” (Vol. 3 No. 2).
Both community input and careful trend observation stand behind the selection of themes for each issue. The latest issue (Vol. 10 No. 1 "From Design to Implementation") is dedicated to the challenges of implementing service design, a subject so worthy of attention it will also be the theme of this year’s Service Design Global Conference in Dublin. And I’m already looking forward to the next issue (Vol. 10 No. 2) which will look at the theme of “Designing the Future”, which has some fascinating contributions.
I’d like to thank all those that have played a vital role in contributing to, editing and producing Touchpoint since its launch. Despite a growing body of quality books, burgeoning offers of trainings and courses, and more and more academic programmes aimed at educating service designers, Touchpoint still occupies a unique and valuable role in further shaping the discourse and future of our discipline.
SDN Vice President
“Service Design at Scale” is a challenge that has arisen out of success, but has no simple answers. The increasingly large mandate, and set of responsibilities, enjoyed by service designers comes with new challenges. In this new issue of Touchpoint, we turn our focus to making our work grow beyond us; spreading the power and value of service design across entire organisations.
How can service design best measure the impact it achieves? In this issue of Touchpoint, we have tackled precisely this challenge as service design must become more mature in justifying itself to decision-makers, both before and after it is applied. We hope the insights and methods in this issue help you answer that question, when you next sit down to plan or review a service design project.
Join us for the Service Design Global Conference (SDGC24) this October! Whether you prefer attending in person in Helsinki or participating online, exciting opportunities await. Register now on the conference website and be part of this inspiring event. See you there!
As the practice of service design continues to gain recognition and traction, a notable trend has emerged: organisations are choosing to build and utilise in-house service design teams rather than relying on external agencies. This shift brings with it a host of considerations, both positive and negative, that merit in-depth exploration and critical reflection.
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