Industrial > service design

About a year back I realised a career within industrial design wasn’t for me and since I’ve been searching for a fitting career path. Service Design for me was something I have always been aware of throughout my education but never considered it as a possible career choice. Though for the past 2 months now after some further research I’ve realised this is the field I was looking for, for reasons best described in the following quote;

What differentiates service design from all other forms of design is that primarily the design of people, rather than the design of things, environments or communications for people. - Lara Penin, > The politics and theatre of service design

What inspired this post was a recent blog item on the home page - A maniefesto for experience design by Ken Fry

I recommend you read if you haven’t so already.

Fry brings up a number of point that gets me thinking service designer.
Design beautiful experiences, not beautiful artifacts.
Stop asking “what” and start asking “why”.
Start with experience, end with experience.
Call yourself an experience designer.

Which goes on to remind me of a talk by Deiter Rams I was lucky enough to attend earlier this year in which he spent a large part of the talk speaking about the designer of tomorrow. Forgive the misquote, (I’ve misplaced my notebook), but Rams mentioned how he believed that designers of tomorrow should be focusing on systems, usings Apples iPod as an example, not the beauty of the hardware, but the whole system of iTunes, the Apple store, the Apple experience, the music service Apple provides…

For the few years I’ve visited these forums service design has been mentioned very little from what I recall. Which suprises me, more and more trained industrial designers are becoming designers of the intangible. So I thought I’d raise some questions and see what others think of the crossover between service design and ID.

Is industrial design evolving into something that can’t be defined by the physical?
Considering the amount of services compared to products and considering consumerisms role in the current climate - Should we not be training service designers that go on to be industrial designers?
Are we becoming the consumers of services, not consumers of products?
Why has service designs growth as a discipline been so much more succesful in Europe compared with the States?

Nothing?

I read that when it first came up as well. I think most of that manifesto is garbage and/or common sense… to be frank. I’m glad to see that Ken has a masters degree in the obvious! :wink:

Of course the Why is most important! That is what makes an artifact an artifact. Part of the experience is the object itself.

Not bagging on experience and or service design (though service design is a horrible name… it sounds like planning out fast food joints), but I love to hate on anyone that clams that any discipline of design is better than another. As a design generalist, I believe a good thinker is a good thinker and those that posses that skill can move between disciplines with relative ease. In specific I’m thinking of some of the great concept storyboarding going on by the ID’ers at Astro and Gravity Tank.

Is industrial design evolving into something that can’t be defined by the physical? I submit that it is not. Long after the experience, the physical remains.

Don’t call yourself an experience designer, call yourself a designer.

The name ‘service design’ does suck, what the deal with design disciplines having boring ass names? Industrial, service, I guess interaction isn’t to bad…

Long after the experience, the physical remains.

Don’t call yourself an experience designer, call yourself a designer.

I disagree here, I’d argue that long after the physical, the experience remains. Out of the products we own/use in our lifetime how many of them do we take to the grave? But the experience, the memory, will always remain.

Funny, I guess it shows are difference of point of view, I wasn’t thinking in the singular person, I was thinking more in the collective. A few months ago when I was down in New York I took my team to Mellett Mercantile which is like the most amazing thrift store… he had an awesome little collection of transistor radios, each at a crazy high price I couldn’t help buying one). The products have long outlived their user, their experience, and even their use and have become art. The fact that it is for sale for $300 in NY surely shows I’m not the only nerd out there… I hope.

I would submit that Mr. Fry is debating semantics. IMO, in the vast majority of cases the thing/object/product IS the experience - they are one in the same. Designing anything is designing an experience of some kind. Design an object, an interface, a classroom lesson, a musical composition, a food dish, a mathematical solution, a lifestyle, etc. Those are all experiences. Anyone involved in the process of creating anything is an experience designer on some level.

oooo, can we see?, i love transistor radios and have a few myself!

Back to the OP, I’d agree with Cameron. Any product has an experience around it. It’s called context and interaction, and as designers, yes we should take care of these things, but the thing can also be an experience in and of itself.

is a car just an object, or the experience of the visual pleasure of seeing it + going from A to B? Is a coffee shop the experience of drinking and relaxing or the chairs and lighting and all that lend the experience it’s tone?

semantics, indeed.

R

Richard_

Will post it when I get back to the US, got some good other vintage gadgets there, you should go next time you are in NY. Expensive as heck, but if you are looking for a pair of US made Nike Track spikes from 1976, or a boyscout patch from 1932, or a turn of the century explorer’s compass, it is the spot to go.

Cameron, well said. Semantics indeed, and that is why I take issue with articles like this. It is meant to provoke reads more than thought in my opinion. The field is evolving… no sh!t sherlock. Maybe a little less emphasis on renaming the profession, and a little more on advocating for it.

The article was more of a starting point, something that got me thinking, maybe I should rename the topic to ‘Industrial > Service Design’ in an attempt to move the discussion away from semantics. In fact, I will, topic title changed.

So experience aside, I was more interested in peoples thoughts on service design. How popular is it over in the states, I just did a double check on adaptive path who I’d call a service design consultancy, yet they seem to focus on ‘experience’, which seems to takes things back to semantics, and things start to get a little cloudy… anyway…

NYC store sounds cool, Yo next time you’re in London if you haven’t already you should check out Brick Lane in Whitechapel. Lots of similar little vintage stores and people selling in the streets on market day though it is a bit of a hipster haven.

Glad to know I’m not the only one who feels this way about these recurring design manifestos that don’t really say anything new IMO. I don’t think they’re bad, but I don’t know what they accomplish. :smiley:

Boogey, will check out those shops next time I’m in town, thanks!

I think working on that type of facet of design is not only needed, it is pretty awesome. Seems like a natural area to gravitate to if that is where your passion is. I think it can be done without bashing traditional ID, not that you are doing that, but it seems to be frequent.

I’ve been in the UK for about 3 months now and there seems to be a lot more emphasis on “service design” here than in the US, especially in the schools I’ve been around. Not sure exactly why that is, but almost all of the students I’ve met that are in or getting out of school seem to think that it is the next great industry for designers

a good link I’ve come across recently too - http://www.servicedesigntools.org/

I think it can be done without bashing traditional ID, not that you are doing that, but it seems to be frequent.

I’m sorry if anything I said came across that way but it was not intended at all, am a bit confused as to what part of the OP you felt this way about? I hope my ‘bashing’ on consumerism in previous topics hasn’t been misread as a bash on ID as I still consider myself an industrial designer just as much as a service designer, like you said, ‘call yourself a designer’. And you’d be mistaken if you assumed I believe one is more important than the other, obviously not, products require services and services require products, both have a role to play and I’m particularly interested in the cross-over between the two.

Not sure exactly why that is, but almost all of the students I’ve met that are in or getting out of school seem to think that it is the next great industry for designers

I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the industrial design consultancies over here compared to over in the states. For one there aren’t too many, especially when compared to ID graduates, and since the process and skills required for the two fields are identical it makes sense for graduates to look into other fields.

I’m not saying you are doing that, not at all. My comments were about how others seem to take an either/of point of view, or one is better than the other. The “Manifesto” definitely was a bit holier than though, and even that is not bad compared to others in that field… but it doesn’t have to be.

I think to be successful in this environment, you kind f have to have it all working well.