Celebrating the Best in Service Design: Highlights from the 2025 Service Design Award Ceremony

The Service Design Award Ceremony 2025, held on October 16 at the Service Design Global Conference (SDGC25) in Dallas, Texas, was an unforgettable celebration of creativity, collaboration, and impact.

The atmosphere buzzed with excitement as designers from around the world gathered to celebrate this year’s outstanding finalists — projects that are redefining what’s possible in service design. The room was filled with energy, anticipation, and pride as we honored the people and teams driving real change through design.

Brian Gillespie, Head of Jury, opened the ceremony by reflecting on the incredible quality and diversity of submissions this year. Together with jury members Cathy Huang, Eliisa Sarkkinen, Simone Carrier, Mauricio Manhães, and Jamin Hegeman, he helped select projects that stood out not only for their creativity but for their lasting social and business impact.

And now, meet this year’s amazing winners — the designers setting new benchmarks for excellence and purpose-driven innovation!

Winners of the Service Design Award 2025:

Best Commercial Project
Transforming Spare Parts Management for Onshore Wind Energy
by Alissa Millenson

Best Non-Profit Project
Creating Kin-specific Foster Home Approval Standards
by BloomWorks

Best Student Project
Dialog
by Kate Winbaum, Vivien Fergusson, Jessica Wonomihardjo, Miran Jurisevic, Maya Burnand, Lucia Perez Gonzalez, and Richa Kejriwal
(Royal College of Art, UK)

Public Choice Award 2025
Empowerment Through Collaboration: Embedding Community Research in Medical Education through Service Design
by Tirath Singh Puni
(Savannah College of Art and Design – SCAD)

During SDGC25, all finalist projects were featured in the Award Exhibition, where conference attendees could dive deep into stories of creativity, courage, and impact. And on October 17, the winners took the stage at the VIP Lounge for live presentations — a chance to share their journeys, lessons, and insights with an enthusiastic audience.

This year’s awards once again proved how powerful service design can be in creating meaningful change — in organizations, communities, and everyday lives.

A huge congratulations to all finalists and winners!

Your work continues to inspire and move our global community forward.

The Service Design Network once again highlighted the incredible power of service design to drive real change and shape a better future. This year’s winners and finalists have proven that service design goes beyond process — it’s a movement creating lasting impact for people, businesses, and communities.

As we look ahead to next year’s awards, we celebrate their inspiring achievements and can’t wait to see how the next generation of innovators will continue to push the boundaries of service design excellence.