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 16-3 Call for Papers: “Business Transformation by Design”

Service design has matured beyond its origins to become a transformative force within organisations. As businesses and public institutions face complex challenges, service design offers a path toward sustainable, human-centered transformation. This upcoming issue of Touchpoint will explore how service design is being positioned — and must be positioned — as a strategic driver of holistic, cross-functional change.

The theme ‘Business Transformation by Design’ calls for service designers to take a leadership role: to not only design better services but also shape the strategic, operational and tactical layers of organisations. It encourages expanding our sphere of influence beyond design-centric circles, bridging into strategy, operations, governance and technology. Service design’s principles of collaboration, co-creation and systemic thinking are more crucial than ever in driving mission-driven innovation and helping organisations across the spectrum — business, government, healthcare and education — navigate transformation with intentionality and resilience.

In this issue, we aim to celebrate service design’s capacity to not just support business as usual, but to reimagine and reconfigure business for the future. We invite contributions that showcase how service designers are expanding their impact across sectors, partnering with organisational leadership, embedding service design principles into the foundations of business and cultivating leadership to drive transformation from within.

We are seeking articles that explore, among other topics:

Service design as an enabler for strategic transformation

• What case studies illustrate successful collaboration between service design and organisational leadership (e.g., CIOs, CTOs, CXOs, HR leaders, solution architects, project managers)?
• How has service design contributed to achieving mission-driven goals, especially within complex, multi-stakeholder environments?

Expanding the reach and influence of service design

• How can service design foster collaboration, co-creation and holistic, cross-disciplinary thinking at the heart of organisational processes?
• How do service designers help organisations move beyond ‘quick fixes’ to embed service design as a foundational, strategic capability?
• How can service designers navigate organisational maturity models to establish service design as a strategic, long-term investment?

Service design and collaborative relationships across sectors

• What sector-specific innovations are emerging through service design in fields such as healthcare, government, education, technology, or retail?
• How is service design creating synergies with adjacent operational frameworks like agile development, process improvement and digital transformation?
• How can service designers effectively integrate their work into non-traditional business contexts, and what lessons can be shared across sectors?

Building and leading service design capabilities

• What does it mean to lead service design initiatives at scale, and what are the necessary mindsets and structures to succeed?
• How can organisations build service design management capabilities to align with strategic goals and maintain momentum through ongoing transformation?
• What skills, mindsets and leadership behaviors are required to position service designers as trusted partners at the executive level?

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