An Undergraduate Collaborative Design Curriculum Incorporating Service Design Peter Kwok Chan a* and Carolina Gill b a b Department of Design, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA *chan.179@osu.edu ABSTRACT This paper describes the development of two new courses that introduce design students to Service Design. One is a collaborative design course with forty-seven junior level course students and three design instructors from Industrial, Interior, and Visual Communication Design disciplines. The second course is a senior level industrial design studio with twenty students and one instructor with an added focus on the business model innovation. The authors discuss topics concerning: 1) how to effectively construct a collaborative environment in an educational setting that would foster innovation among participating students in the undergraduate level, and 2) the most expedient service design tools and methods to facilitate design thinking in a student-led team-based studio course. Keyword: Service Design, Collaborative Design, Design Method, Design Thinking 1. Introduction The study examines the blueprint of the design process in which a range of Service Design tools (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2012), Design Thinking methods (Lockwood, 2009; Kumar 2013; Poggenpohl, 2009), and Business Model Generation tools (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010) applied in two different undergraduate level courses to address the following learning goals: 1) understand various phases of the design process in a single discipline and collaborative interdisciplinary environment, 2) apply analytical frameworks to identify key insights, 3) translate insights into design opportunities and create design proposals that integrate different disciplinary approaches into unified concepts, 4) define project scope and plan for developing user definition, value hypothesis, user journey scenarios, business models, etc., 5) construct a design solution focusing on user interactions and overall experience, and 6) present verbally and graphically from the initial ideas to final design proposals. 2. Context The current approach of Service Design education has been evolving for more than two decades; it was first established in 1991 as an educational field and area of research by Professor Dr. Michael Erlhoff and Birgit Mager at Köln International
School of Design in Germany (Moritz, 2005). Since then The Service Design Network, a coalition of academic, consultants, and practitioners, emerged to explore and define the fundamentally interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary practice. In 2010 the first comprehensive textbook This is Service Design Thinking (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2012), was published. Additional printed books and design journals have since been published by individuals and institutions focusing on both theoretical and practical aspects of Service Design. There are also design programs around the world offering Service Design as a distinct design major or course subject. The authors have been actively involved in the undergraduate design program curriculum development as key members on the Department s Curriculum Conversion team which was formed to address the University s eleven-week quarter to a fifteen-week semester conversion in 2012. They worked closely with Industrial, Interior, and Visual Communication Design colleagues to assess the current curriculum and formulate new programmatic goals and objectives reflective of the new design landscape (Melsop, Gill, Chan, 2011). In the process of re-envisioning the curriculum of the Department, four key areas were identified as main threads intended to drive the new direction: 1) Generative and Evaluative Research; 2) Interdisciplinary Approach; 3) Social and Environmental Responsibility; and 4) Emerging Technologies. The holistic perspective embodied in this curriculum re-envisioning process presents the context and purpose for the authors to re-align their research and teaching with new course developments, program goals, and the evolving design education environment. Service Design was identified as a conduit to address these key areas because it is an interdisciplinary endeavor, it requires multiple research approaches, it can address social issues and it requires novel ways of using technology to communicate complex systems, products, spaces and interactions. 3. Course Design and Outcomes The progress of both courses was defined by three key design phases: Design Research and Opportunity Framing, Ideation and Design Conceptualization, and Design Solutions, each employing its own relevant tools, methodologies, and design approaches. 3.1 Collaborative Design Studio The Collaborative Studio brought together three design disciplines (Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication) into one studio environment during the Spring semester of the third year of study. Nine student teams were formed with three teams per studio-session under the supervision of one instructor. The three instructors worked closely to organize and integrate course materials and reviews for all three sessions.
Additionally, the course was co-taught whenever possible to support the underlying pedagogical purpose. Each team with a balanced mix of 4-6 randomly assigned one of three experience topics Living and Socializing, Learning and Studying, and Moving and Transportation in the university s campus. Student teams were guided to use an integrated design thinking approach to mesh their design considerations for service, technology and object into their proposed design solutions in story telling narratives, digital and physical prototypes. The Service Design topics were introduced to the class through lectures, required text readings (Kumar 2013; Lockwood, 2009; Stickdorn and Schneider, 2012; Martin and Hanington, 2012) and discussion, practitioners presentations and real-world case studies, and team ideation sessions. Figure 1: Phase 1, Design research and Opportunity framing The first phase, The Design Research and Opportunity framing, required each team to develop research plan that began with a study of general trends and broad view of the assigned topic, followed by establishment of intent and context for the topic and identification of stakeholders. The tools and methods employed during this phase included Popular Media Scan, Literature Review, Trends, Observation, Interviews, Survey, Field Visit, Current User Journey, Insights Clustering Matrix, to name a few. The third year design students were able to apply skills and knowledge acquired in previous research courses in order to identify pain points, potential needs and desires and translate their insights into design opportunities. Figure 2: Phase 2, Design Conceptualization During second phase, Design Conceptualization, the students in each team engaged in ideation sessions and capitalized on their unique disciplinary approaches to translate insight statements into design principles that effectively respond to various pain
points and problem areas defined in phase 1. The process provided a common set of design language for concept exploration and creation of a holistic design solution through story telling, ideal use-case scenarios, proposed service interaction in specific contexts, user attributes, persona definition, and value hypothesis. Figure 3: Phase 3, Design Solutions The final phase, Design Solutions, focused on the process of visualizing the proposed design solution, making it tangible by addressing specific touchpoints, and presenting the user interaction and the overall user experience. The final deliverables from all nine teams were diverse. They included renderings of product and space, graphic applications, storyboard sketches, process diagrams, information architecture, service blueprints and concept videos of service and interaction models. 3.2 Industrial Design Studio: Designing for Social Inclusion The fourth year Industrial Design course took place in the autumn semester following the Collaborative Studio course. The general objectives were to reinforce the learning goals met during the collaborative studio, expand the application of service design tools and methods to a social inclusion context and introduce the business perspective. This course sequence was developed in support of the key issues agreed upon by the Department s curriculum redesign during the University s semester conversion. In this course, design for social inclusion was defined as designing for people who are excluded, for whatever reason, and for whom good design is less available, whose needs and problems are equally worthy of well-designed solutions. The students were required to select a target audience who could be socially, economically, physically or geographically excluded. The class was divided in teams of three and they selected their audience based on access and availability. After defining a scope, they followed three design phases consistent with those in the collaborative studio. The tools and methods used were also similar with a few exceptions. They were required to spend
more time analyzing data, framing opportunities and diagramming relationships not only for design concepts but also for business models alternatives (Figure 4). The students were introduced to a few additional tools (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010) Empathy Maps, Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Map. Figure 4. Opportunity Map and Business Model Canvas The final design solutions required a product/service artifact enabled by a clear business model. Students were challenged by the new format the outcomes called for such as scenarios depicting customer segments, relationships, business channels (computer models of products, apps, websites), business activities, partners and interactions. All teams developed videos that described the design solutions along with the product/service systems that typically included communication technologies. Figure 5. Final Video This course benefited greatly from the previous experience the Industrial Design students had during the collaborative studio. It allowed for the development of more sophisticated services around social inclusion and it served to reinforce the large level curricular goals set up by the faculty during the departmental curriculum redesign. An additional benefit was the exposure to different design practices. The industrial design students reflected a new awareness, knowledge and appreciation for Visual Communication and Interior Design.
4. Conclusion and Reflections These courses required the students to engage with Service Design Thinking from the user-centered and holistic approaches. The authors learned that effective design collaboration demands the participants to share knowledge, identify common goals, negotiate scope, manage constraints, challenge mindsets, expand design processes, and integrate methodologies to enable focused and broader perspectives. The first experience in the collaborative studio allowed students to share disciplinary knowledge and negotiate methodologies, terminologies and diverse design applications. The second course allowed students to reflect on their learning experience and translate the new knowledge back to their own discipline generating more comprehensive and effective design solutions. The Service Design toolbox applied in both courses provides a set of scalable and applicable team based cross-disciplinary tools and processes that generate integrative solutions able to address difficult and meaningful problems. REFERENCES Melsop, S. & Gill, C. & Chan, P., Re-Envisioning A Design Curriculum DesignEd Asia Conference 2010, School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, December 1-2 2010 Chan, P. & Melsop, S. & Shim, S., Developing a Collaborative Design Studio: Transforming mindsets for emergent practices, Proceedings of the 2013 IDSA Education Symposium, Chicago, IL: August 21-24, 2013. Kum ar, V. 2013. 101 Design Methods: A structured approach for driving innovation in your organization. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Lockwood, T. 2009. Transition: Becoming a Design Minded Organization. In T. Lockwood (Ed.), Design Thinking: Integrating innovation, customer experience, and brand value (pp. 81-98). New York, NY: Allworth Press. Martin, B. & Hanington, B. 2012. Universal Methods of Design: 100 ways to research complex problem, develop innovative ideas, and design effective solutions. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers. Moritz, S. 2005. Service Design: Practical access to an evolving world. Köln International School of Design. (KISD), Köln, Germany. Osterwalder, A. & Pigneur, Y. 2010. Business Model Generation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Poggenpohl, S. 2009. Practicing Collaborative Action in Design. In S. Poggenpohl, & K. Sato (Eds.), Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration (pp. 137-162). Chicago, IL: Intellect, University of Chicago Press. Stickdorn, M. & Schneider, J. 2012. This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.