MA Service Design
MA Service Design Links:
Publication on Service Design Pedagogy: Salinas, L. et al. (2023) ‘Teaching Service Design: pedagogical reflections’, in. ServDes the Service Design and Innovation conference, Rio de Janeiro Brazil. https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/20075/
blog: http://masedi.myblog.arts.ac.uk
course page: https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/business-and-management-and-science/postgraduate/ma-service-design-lcc
twitter and instagram: @MAServiceDesign
To cite:
Grimaldi, S., Lujan Escalante, M. (2024), 'Design Pedagogy for Changemaking' [Lecture], MA Service Design, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. February 2024, available at https://youtu.be/eowcG_iIa7g.
London College of Communication has been teaching and researching in Service Design since 2007. I was leading the course from January 2017 to December 2021, growing the course from about 50 application a year in 2016 to over 700 in 2022, and growing the range and network of partners we work with on live projects from a research, teaching and knowledge exchange perspective.
In 2020 I led the revalidation and redesign of the course, rewriting the Master's to address contemporary challenges and new directions in service design. This was a collaborative effort involving the whole teaching and research team in service design, students and alumni, our external partners and stakeholders, and consulting with prominent service design consultancies and in-house departments.
Within this, we redefined the course as such:
Service design is a human-centred discipline which focuses on:
designing services in the public or private sector
working in a participative, iterative and qualitative manner with all stakeholders
considering wider systems at play.
By developing and applying service design to a range of societal and business challenges, this course enables students to work on live projects, collaborate with stakeholders, partners and experts across multiple disciplines, and use design at a strategic level.
We teach through live projects: We focus on collaboration for service design challenges facing the private, public and third sectors. The majority of projects are live and taught with involvement of multiple partners, clients, experts and stakeholders.
We are committed to ethical practices of design: We use approaches that go from the micro aspects of individual user needs to the macro aspects of larger systems including humans, organisations, society and ecology.
We are at the forefront of new developments in service design: We work in innovative areas such as policy and science, and in collaboration with high profile and industry-leading service design research projects at LCC, UAL and beyond.
We apply innovation processes: We engage with start-up and social entrepreneurship and use non-linear and agile ways of working. We engage critically with new technologies to identify opportunities for human-centred and socially beneficial applications.
We value making and design-based methods throughout the design process: We communicate service design processes and outputs to a wider public through designed artefacts, reports, videos, presentations and exhibitions.
To do this we built on and continued those values and practices we have been teaching since the beginning: in-depth immersive ethnographic research with real stakeholders and partners, mapping and making sense of insights, stepping back and unserstanding the problem space, questioning assumptions, and delivering service proposals that account for all stakeholders affected by the project.
Learning through doing, but with theoretical depth, is one of the most important aspects of the course. Units are structured around live projects, and we teach theory that directly relates to the stages of the project, so students can contextualise and apply their learning from academic papers, books, lectures, etc into the projects they are working on, and reflect on this through their own writing practice.
Teamwork and collaboration are key. On the course students collaborate in teams with their classmates, who come from many different professional and cultural backgrounds, from all design disciplines to humanities, architecture, engineering, finance, science. In addition all our projects are live and collaborating with real stakeholders and project partners in the public, private and third sector.
Using human-centred and qualitative methods and focussing on delivering social value, and taking an ethical approach to live projects, enruring all partners gain value from the project and all stakeholders have a voice.
New Directions: At the same time, we developed some new directions for the course.
The course now evolves through different scales in terms of the focus of the work as well as the temporality of the projects. Students will start from working on service delivery projects in the here and now, working in teams, and adopting human-centred methodologies. As the year progresses students work on more systems-based methodologies and on projects that have a wider scope, addressing for example both policy and service design. Eventually students work with speculative design methodologies using service design as a way to envision futures. Students work in teams for the whole year, up to their major project, which is individual.
In conjunction with this, we have been strengthening the mission to deliver social and ecological value through the student projects. We see a responsibility to train students to work in an ethical, inclusive and ecological way. We want to empower them to shape the ways in which they will engage with service design projects in their future careers, to have an approach that allows them to challenge the brief they are given and make sure that they understand, when working with communities, what is inclusive practice and what is extractive. In order to do this we have been engaging with design justice approaches and strenghtening student unserstanding of how to challenge the brief they are given and make sure that they understand, when working with communities, what is inclusive practice as opposed to extractive practice.
Design approaches are particularly important and have been strengthened. Iterating, prototyping, failing quickly are embraced, but also making as a mode of engagement with stakeholders and publics. Making is used as a way to communicate, engage and provoke.
Emphasising a holistic approach to the discipline that goes beyond the application of a set of tools and allows students to understand how to create tools that are appropriate to the particular geographical, cultural and social contexts they will be working within.
What I did as Course Leader:
I led the academic team delivering the MA Service Design course, and I have built on previous successes and the team’s strengths to create a vision for the course that truly embodies the principles of Knowledge Exchange, in consultation with industry and academic partners, through a revalidation (2020). The vast majority of projects on the course are live and involve deep partnerships with government, private and third sector organisations.
As Course Leader on MA Service Design (MASD) I led the academic team (8 lecturers) in coordinating and delivering live student projects with a variety of partners. These are complex projects involving multiple stakeholders such as local authorities, health services, publics, charitable and private organisations, and often bridge research, teaching and knowledge exchange. I led the academic team setting up the projects so students interact with, co-design with and get feedback from stakeholders, publics, service users and service delivery staff, and experts in the project fields, throughout the various stages of the project.
Impact and Professional Recognition:
Under my leadership, outcomes from MASD projects have featured in the AHRC Design for Change exhibition and book, reports and academic publications by the European Union Joint Research Commission, reports by Camden Council and other local authorities, AHRC Challenges of the Future: Public Services Report, and professional and academic conferences, venues and exhibitions such as the Service Design Network conferences, Nordic 2030, Mozilla OpenFest, The Future of Government conference and Exhibition at the EU parliament and touring the EU.
Funding:
I have been regularly generating income through KE projects over the last five years, gaining funding and in-kind commitments for student and staff projects from a variety of external partners, and have used this funding to grow capacity within service design at LCC as well as for dissemination activities and growing the public facing profile.
Impact on Students:
Knowledge Exchange opportunities have a great impact on students. MASD students graduate with portfolios featuring high impact professional work, and learn how to navigate feedback and priorities from different partners and stakeholders. The vast majority of students on MASD are employed as service designers, in junior, mid or sometimes senior roles, within months of graduating. Students are regularly invited to speak at professional events such as the Service Design Fringe, London Design Festival, Service Design Network.
In the Selection of KE Projects section below are some relevant examples; more is available at https://masedi.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Course Leader
MA Service Design
2017-2021
Here's a map of what my role as course leader entailed
Selection of projects with MA Service Design
2021
Good Help for Camden Families During and After COVID.
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: Family Support services in Camden Council, as well as the Public Collaboration Lab (PCL) at UAL, 23 changemaker families; 4 family workers; SFLab; MASD and MADV students and academics (43 students; 6 academics), 2 MASD graduates employed as interns on the project.
Funding: Camden provided £5000 to pay interns, plus in-kind weekly organisational capacity and participation
Outcomes: 8 student projects, one overall report with policy recommendations
Impact: policy recommendations presented to senior council leaders for implementation
My role: Managed partnership & project; assembled teams; created brief & direction; taught; managed project reporting; supervised graduate interns
2020-2021
Service Design for Meanwhile Use in Chalk Farm and Euston
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: Camden Council High Streets Team; Euston Partnership; HS2 Ltd; PCL; Public Studio; 31 MASD students; 2 MASD academics; community organisations and charities
Funding: In-kind weekly participation by partners
Outcomes: 8 student projects proposals
Impact: Proposals will be brought forward towards implementation by the Public Studio
My role: Managed partnership, brief, and project; assembled teams
2020
Covid-19 Camden Council Response Food Distribution Project
Type of project: MASD non-curriculum project
Partners: 5 departments within Camden Council; PCL; UAL Digital Transformation; 1 Service Designer from Engine; 1 PhD student; 23 MASD students; 1 MASD academic
Funding: daily in-kind participation from partners
Outcomes: digital system for monitoring and assigning food deliveries
Impact: outcome was delivered and implemented and still in use 6 months later; this allows the delivery staff to change as and when people come in and out of furlough
My role: Collaboratively set up briefs and partnership; assembled teams; taught the project
Covid-19 Camden Council Response Volunteer Brokerage/Vetting/Training Project
Type of project: MASD non-curriculum project
Partners: 3 departments within Camden Council; 3 charities; PCL; UAL Digital Transformation; 1 Service Designer from Engine; 1 PhD student; 23 MASD students; 1 MASD academic
Funding: daily in-kind participation from partners
Outcomes: redesign processes for volunteer onboarding and modifications to online platform
Impact: online platforms were modified in line with suggestions
My role: Collaboratively set up briefs and partnership; assembled teams; taught the project
Volunteering Service for LCC
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: LCC Business and Innovation; 3 local charities; SFLab; 3 MASD academics; 39 MASD students; 15 students from other MAs at LCC.
Funding: Bi-weekly in-kind participation from LCC B&I, in-kind from charities
Outcomes: 5 service proposals for an LCC Volunteering Service
Impact: LCC B&I commissioned this piece of work to help shape a volunteering service
My role: Set up briefs; assembled academic team.
New Service Development for Sexual Health
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: SH:24, SFLab; 3 MASD academics; 39 MASD students; 15 students from other MAs at LCC.
Funding: £5000
Outcomes: 1 service proposal
My role: Set up the partnership; assembled academic team; set up brief.
2019
Tackling Transient Work & Homelessness
Type of project: MASD non-curriculum project
Partners: St Mungo’s; 20 MASD students; one MASD graduate employed on the project; 1 MASD academic
Funding: In-kind participation in the project; in-kind stakeholder management
Outcomes: student and graduate work contributed to St Mungo’s report
My role: Facilitated the student and graduate involvement in the project.
Southwark Over 65 Mobility Consultation
Type of project: MASD non-curriculum project
Partners: Southwark Council, SFLab; 20 MASD students; 2 MASD academics; SFLab
Funding: £5000 to pay students and academics for their work
Outcomes: Report with qualitative research
Impact: Influenced policy decisions in Southwark Council
My role: Set up the partnership; manged academic team; set up brief.
Resilient Ageing in Lambeth
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: Age UK Lambeth; 1 consultant; SFLab; 39 MASD students; 2 MASD academics
Funding: in-kind one day a week of consultant time plus two sessions with CEO
Outcomes: 7 student projects
Impact: Projects used as proof of concept within Age UK.
My role: Collaboratively set up partnership; manged academic team; set up brief; taught on the project.
2018
Encouraging Take-up of Electric Vehicles (EV) in South London
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: Char.gy (EV startup) and Spotless (Service Design Consultancy); 30 MASD students; 2 MASD academics
Funding: in-kind participation: 2 senior service designers weekly workshops and CEO time
Outcomes: 7 service proposals, one exhibition
Impact: Service proposals are used as proof-of-concept by Chargy
My role: Collaboratively set up partnership; manged academic team; set up brief
The Future of Government 2030+
Type of project: MASD curriculum project
Partners: European Union Joint Research Commission; Social Design Institute; Camden Council; EU Policy Lab, UK Policy Lab.
Funding: £5000 for commissioned work by EU JRC
Outcomes: 6 speculative service proposals with artefacts, several exhibitions
Impact: student proposals used in the EU JRC report, presented at the Future of Government conference at EU parliament, exhibited at EU commission and in a touring exhibition. Student presentations involved elected council officials among others.
My role: Collaborated in setting up the partnership, some teaching and reporting activity