Service Design – Historical frames and contemporary issues. Professor Alison Prendiville

Starting with a historical lens this lecture will explore the nature and emergence of service to contextualise key developments that have come to define it. Different perspectives on service design will then be presented to explore its role and contribution to contemporary challenges.


This first talk from the Service Future Lab at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (recorded: 1st February 2023) opens by setting the scene for understanding the historical origins of service and different ways of designing for service. Having worked in service design research and practice over the last two decades, I have observed its emergence and rapid adoption that started tentatively with its early focus on improving user experiences, to today’s more comprehensive engagement with organizational transformation, and societal challenges. In parallel, I have always had an interest in design history and culture and how people are connected, and the relationships formed through design.

Starting with the infrastructural nature of services during the industrial revolution, and their role in enabling the transportation of people and goods as a key component of the capitalist system, the session presents general principles that come to define today’s global systems and raises questions on the ethical role and potential for service designers in the current climate.

What follows is reflections from projects with local government, and transdisciplinary projects in human and animal health in India, to highlight some of the methods that make service design so well suited to tackling complex systemic challenges. In parallel consideration will be given to different ways of conceptualizing designing for service and how this may assist our understanding in configuring relationships between humans, more than human, technologies, institutions, and place.

This lecture is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in service design research and practice and more generally those students or professionals curious to better understand the opportunities for design to address societal challenges.

Biography

Dr Alison Prendiville is Professor of Service Design at LCC, University of the Arts London. Her research is transdisciplinary and transverses science and technology innovation with a focus on open, socially responsive co-design processes, with communities in the areas of human and animal health systems.

The focus of her design research is on service transformation, with her most recent work addressing the global health challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) under a One-Health approach in the development of diagnostics in India, in the UK in nursing practices and with current research investigating operational issues in the NHS relating to blood culture pathways. Her interests centre on understanding the contribution of design as a means of co-creating and translating knowledge between diverse actors, particularly when dealing with complex entangled societal challenges. She applies a systemic design approach to her research and draws on service design and anthropology knowledge to understand and amplify the role of culture in healthcare.

She has contributed to numerous chapters in books and has co-edited and co-authored chapters in the 2017, ‘Designing for Service: Key Issues and New Directions’. She has been invited to speak and deliver workshops in the UK and internationally. Her work has informed policy, and she is an advisor to research panels nationally and internationally.