In the 1990s, the Cologne-based Köln International School of Design (KISD) was the only university teaching service design in an academic design context and was the only place where service design projects took place, testing and growing the body of knowledge and experience.

Far too many service designers – both students and professionals – fall into the ‘touchpoint design’ trap. Very early on in the process, they focus their efforts on mapping, analysing and redesigning customer-facing touchpoints throughout the service delivery system.

What we do is evolving. There can be very little argument that service design is finding itself in some odd places these days, from working to reduce crime, to supporting disarmament processes, to actively shaping public policy.

In any given service ecology there are multiple touchpoints that an organisation must design and manage.

Our 21st century world requires an unprecedented amount of energy. We depend on an ever-increasing supply to improve – or simply maintain – the lifestyles we have become accustomed to.

Government agencies may perceive a need for better customer relations but often respond with isolated remedies.

Camden Council is one of London’s 33 boroughs. It has been granted Beacon Status (now the Local Innovation Awards Scheme) for its positive engagement of older people in the development and delivery of services.

Today, there are higher education institutions in various countries that offer service design programmes, but we rarely find that these institutions have taken service development seriously to the extent that they have redesigned their own university services.

Service Design and Innovation (SDI) is a mandatory studio course for all 4th year students (ca. 130) at the ELISAVA School of Design.

Service design is relatively late to the party as a part of higher education. It is encouraging to see a growth in the number of courses, but it is also noticeable that service design has no clear home in academia.

This article describes how we developed a new service design curriculum and integrated current research into the courses.

Service designers embrace co-design for political, ethical and pragmatic reasons, but the theory behind how and why these methods work is largely unfocused.

This article describes the learning-by-doing approach adopted to teach service design at a postgraduate level by the Italian design school, Domus Academy.

This article presents the curricular structure of the Service Design Area of Study at Parsons School of Design Strategies, its pilots and current range of courses.

The past decade has been witness to incremental development within the emerging practice of service design, as indicated by an increase in the number of service design organisations and academic programs around the world.

It was 6pm, Friday night, March 11th, 2011 and the Global Service Jam (GSJ) was underway!

Since 2008, the London service design community has grown from a series of informal gatherings to a global network of service designers and people interested in service design.