Parsons Desis Lab

Service Design Futures

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• Posted on May 31, 2010.
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Research note pre­pared by Laura For­lano about the event       Ser­vice Design Per­form­ances at Par­sons.

What does theater have to do with ser­vice design? This ques­tion was addressed in a present­a­tion, “Dram­at­urgy of Ser­vices,” by Roman Aeber­sold, a designer from Lucerne School of Art and Design in Switzer­land, who has been a vis­itor at the Par­sons this spring. The present­a­tion was part of a work­shop, “Ser­vice Design Per­form­ances,” which was organ­ized by the DESIS Lab in late May in order to con­vene New York’s design com­munity and cul­tiv­ate a dis­cus­sion around design­ing for ser­vices. As design tools and meth­ods have become increas­ingly use­ful for problem-solving in a wide range of areas, design­ers are play­ing an import­ant role in cre­at­ing not only logos and web­sites but also inter­ac­tions, organ­iz­a­tions and systems.

At Par­sons, the inter­sect­ing role of design for ser­vices, sus­tain­ab­il­ity and social innov­a­tion mark the core of courses, external part­ner­ships and labs, which con­sider the role of ser­vices at the indi­vidual, house­hold and city level, explained Lara Penin, co-founder of the DESIS Lab. We inter­act with many kinds of ser­vices every­day includ­ing gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial ser­vices though a series of “touch­points” in face-to-face set­tings as well as by phone and through web­sites. We are also some­times pro­viders of ser­vices for one another how­ever, we some­times fail to recog­nize our own roles as ser­vice providers.

Roundtable with Cameron Tonk­in­wise, Bruce Nuss­baum, Lara Penin, Daniela San­giorgi, Roman Aeber­sold, Anna Meroni

Take this example. The DESIS Lab’s Amp­lify pro­ject is con­duct­ing research on com­munity gar­dens in the Lower East Side as mod­els of social innov­a­tion. Through act­ive col­lab­or­a­tion and par­ti­cip­a­tion, com­munity garden­ers are both provid­ing a beau­ti­ful envir­on­ment for neigh­bors and pass­ersby while also enjoy­ing the bene­fits of their own gar­dens. In this case, “People are hid­den behind objects,” accord­ing to Anna Mer­oni, a vis­it­ing scholar from Milan Poly­tech­nic, “and the garden is the product.” We must re-conceptualize these pro­jects in order to demys­tify the role of ser­vices and the people that provide them.

Now, out of the garden and back to the stage and, well, the ser­vice design per­formers. Aebersold’s present­a­tion described the ways in which the tools and meth­ods used by storytellers could be applied to ser­vice design. For example, what makes a good story? What parts are excit­ing and what parts are bor­ing? What are the back-stories, and how do they inter­act with the main story? By under­stand­ing these basic pat­terns and prin­ciples of storytelling, Aeber­sold explained how we might cre­ate a toolkit for the nar­ra­tion of ser­vices using the example of an every­day inter­ac­tion at a restaurant.

Blue­print+, Roman Aebersold

Draw­ing new meth­ods and tools from a wide range of dis­cip­lines includ­ing com­put­ing, psy­cho­logy, urban plan­ning and even theater is both char­ac­ter­istic and neces­sary for innov­a­tion in ser­vice design. Design­ers must be com­fort­able break­ing the rules of estab­lished dis­cip­lines and mak­ing con­nec­tions between exist­ing fields of know­ledge and prac­tices. Since ser­vices can­not be designed com­pletely (due to the essen­tial par­ti­cip­a­tion of the user or con­sumer) it is neces­sary to enable the con­di­tions for inter­ac­tions and, rather, Design for Ser­vices as advoc­ated in a forth­com­ing book by Mer­oni and her co-author Daniela San­giorgi, a pro­fessor at Lan­caster Uni­ver­sity. In Europe, in par­tic­u­lar, there has been a lot of activ­ity around the re-design of gov­ern­ment ser­vices such as wel­fare and eco­nomic devel­op­ment programs.

Per­haps one of the chief tal­ents of ser­vice design­ers is their emphasis on the role of empathy with users, dia­logue with cit­izens and telling the stor­ies of con­sumers. Much like an actor or comedian that seeks to under­stand and delight their audi­ence, by focus­ing on the many inter­ac­tions or touch­points that people encounter every­day, ser­vice design­ers have much to learn from per­formers and just as much to teach com­pan­ies and organ­iz­a­tions engaged in provid­ing ser­vices from health­care and trans­port­a­tion to food and entertainment.

And, with that, the per­formers exited stage right.