Touchpoint – The Journal of Service Design

Touchpoint provides a window into the discussion of service design, facilitating a forum to debate, share and advance the field and its practices. In addition, it aims at engaging clients to listen in on the discussion, learn about the field, and become involved in the development and implementation of service design for their organisations.

The three key audiences of the publication are:

• Service design practitioners
• Client organisations including businesses, non-profits, and public sector/government
• Academia

Touchpoint 16-2 Call for Papers: “Designing for Equitable Experiences”

In service design, achieving equity means actively removing systemic barriers so that people – regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, ability, or socioeconomic status – can access, engage with, and benefit from services and experiences. Equity is not just about representation or universal design; it is about redesigning structures, policies, and processes to ensure that excluded and underserved groups become genuine co-creators – cultivating collective intelligence, encouraging shared decision-making, and taking shared ownership of both outputs and outcomes.

Deep inequities persist across high-touch and digital-first experiences in healthcare, education, retail, financial services, and other service sectors. Yet, even as the urgency for equitable design grows, equity itself is under threat. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are being rolled back, deprioritised, or dismantled across industries and regions – driven by political shifts, market pressures, and risk aversion – ultimately paving the way for exclusionary practices under the guise of neutrality and meritocracy.

What role can service design practitioners play in ensuring equity remains at the centre of our practice, even in the face of backlash? How might we break free from performative activism (“DEI theatre”) to design services that genuinely dismantle systemic barriers and democratise access to resources?

We are looking for articles, case studies, thought pieces, and toolkits that grapple with the challenges of equity in an era of uncertainty and resistance. If you are designing, researching, or advocating for more equitable services and experiences, we want to hear from you.
We encourage submissions that critically engage with the following 10 key questions:

• How might we (HMW) equip design leaders and service design practitioners to push back against inequitable systems – especially in environments where fear, uncertainty, or leadership resistance threaten progress?
• HMW move beyond a product-centric, design-for-everyone mindset (‘universal design’) to equity-first approaches that prioritise and support excluded or underserved groups – ensuring meaningful inclusion, access, and agency?
• HMW design for equity in a way that respects diverse cultural, economic, and social contexts around the world?
• HMW help innovation & design teams uncover and address blind spots in their methodologies, workflows, and feedback loops to ensure more equitable and impactful experiences and outcomes?
• HMW confront and dismantle power imbalances in participatory design and co-creation – ensuring that collaboration shifts from extractive or performative to genuinely inclusive, reciprocal, and transformative?
• HMW foster a culture of systemic equity in the workplace where all employees feel valued, supported, and empowered, regardless of their background and identity?
• HMW ensure that customer and employee experiences do not intentionally or unintentionally exclude groups and individuals with one or more impairments?
• HMW position equity as a strategic imperative – embedding it into core business strategy as a driver of innovation and growth, rather than treating it as a moral obligation or regulatory requirement?
• HMW redefine success in service innovation and design – expanding beyond traditional service performance metrics (such as productivity, quality, scalability, and profitability) to service justice metrics (such as inclusion, accessibility, agency, and dignity)?
• HMW reimagine the future of innovation and design so that equity is not an afterthought, but the foundation upon which all systems, services, and experiences are built?

We welcome contributions from throughout the service design community, as well as those with knowledge and experience in this theme, to contribute to this issue. By doing so, you will be helping service designers make the next step towards an even more mature practice of our discipline.

Regular sections

Besides handing in articles related to this issue’s feature, you are also invited to hand in content for the other regular sections of Touchpoint, which are not related to the theme of the issue:

• Cross-Discipline: Highlighting the connection between service design and other disciplines
• Tools and Methods: Introduction and evaluation of techniques and activities for service design projects
• Education and Research: Insights from academia and research. 

Abstract submission

At the bottom of this page, you find the 'submit an abstract' button. By clicking the button, the abstract submission form will be shown. On the submission form, you will need to fill in, besides your contact information, the following information:

• Category: Please arrange your submission in one of the Touchpoint sections (Feature, Cross-Discipline, Tools and Methods, Education and Research).
• Scope of your contribution: Please indicate the proposed length of the article you would like to write if your abstract is selected. Short article:  700 – 800 words (2 pages in Touchpoint) / Medium article:  1100 – 1400 words (4 pages in Touchpoint) / Long article:  1900 – 2200 words (6 pages in Touchpoint).
• Title: the proposed title of your article with 5-8 words.
• Abstract: the abstract (max. 2000 characters) should outline the objective, the structure and the benefit (three key learnings) of your article for the readers. Please also indicate what existing data or evidence you will refer to or what research will be carried out to support your article.
• Relevance to service design: Brief description (max. 300 characters) on why your article is interesting to service designers and what new knowledge it will bring to the service design discipline.
• Biography: short biography (max. 300 characters) of the author(s) including background, key activities and projects. 

After filling in the form, click on 'Submit'. You should receive a confirmation email with the copy of your abstract in case of a successful submission (please check your spam folder as well).

In case you experience any problem submitting your abstract via the system or don't receive the confirmation email, please send us via email your abstract submission in a Word file following the required fields on the abstract submission form. We will confirm the receipt of your submission per email within a week. 

Language and Tone of Voice

The editorial language of Touchpoint is British English. If you are not a native English speaker, make sure your abstract is proofread by a native speaker before you hand in it.

Touchpoint is a non-academic, rather practice-oriented journal, therefore articles are supposed to be easy in tone, not too academic but rather practical in approach – thus, easy to understand for practitioners, academics as well as laymen interested in service design.

When writing your text please focus on the benefit of your article for the readers – do not only report about project steps but present key learnings that the reader will take away.

Before considering to submit an abstract for Touchpoint, please make sure to check that the PR/Communications/Legal departments of your company and client-side agree with your submission, if relevant. Also note that if the article is approved to be published, authors will need to sign an Agreement for Publication and Transfer of Copyrights. 

Editorial timeline