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 15-2 Call for Papers: ‘Achieving Interdisciplinarity’

Service designers work within a unique context. Because our work influences service innovation, improvement and delivery across lengthy and often complex customer lifecycles, we must work closely with stakeholders from across our organisations, and even beyond. While we aim for deep expertise in our own practice, we must also familiarise ourselves with the ways many others work. Engaging them throughout discovery work, involving them in co-creation and testing, and - finally - collaborating with them to ensure implementation is a success.

This interdisciplinary approach is a hallmark of service design. It recognises that only through close cooperation can the broad impact of service design be successfully achieved.  Interdisciplinarity can be a challenge; a mandate and high-level support is often a prerequisite, and further time is needed to understand and constructively engage with those whose work is very different from ours. 

How can we successfully initiate and facilitate ‘interdisciplinarity’, expanding our practice and achieving greater impact? That is the theme for the next issue of Touchpoint.

We are interested in proposals for articles that address some of the following questions, amongst others:

• How is interdisciplinarity anchored in project agreements, and how is the appropriate mandate and the high level support achieved?
• What are prime examples of service design (-lead) projects that embraced a truly multidisciplinary approach? What did those look like, and what was the impact and outcome?
• Which challenges have you faced and how did you successfully overcome them?
• What tools, frameworks and methodologies exist to help service designers immerse themselves in practices both near and far from our own? 
• How can interdisciplinary collaboration be successfully achieved within a specific project context (e.g. activities, deliverables, collaboration techniques, etc.)?
• What team structures and organisational design approaches are best suited to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration? Think of embedded, distributed or centralised (service) design teams, for example.
• Are there measurements for the value of interdisciplinarity?
• Does current service design education adequately prepare tomorrow’s service designers for multidisciplinary and collaborative ways-of-working? How is this being achieved?
• What are the key challenges faced by service designers when integrating emerging technologies, such as AI, IoT, blockchain into multidisciplinary projects? And how can these challenges be effectively addressed to leverage the full potential of such emerging technologies within service design?
• How are the principles of sustainability and social responsibility being woven into multidisciplinary projects, and how can others learn from these techniques?
• How do cultural differences and diverse perspectives impact interdisciplinary collaboration in global service design projects? What strategies can be employed to navigate and leverage cultural diversity effectively in order to enhance project outcomes and stakeholder satisfaction?

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