Gill Wildman of Plot and Chris Downs of live/work make an energetic and thoughtful case for Service innovation design in a conversation with GK VanPatter, Co-Founder, NextDesign Leadership Institute. Well worth a read in full.
To give you a taste, here is a snippet from Gill:
“Service innovation design encourages you to take a genuinely people-centered, empathetic approach, beyond even the user-centered design methods popularized by best-practice product designers. User scenarios often frame people in a passive role as part of some machine (“the system”). People show up as talented thumbs in texting scenarios. They turn up as talking wallets in retail scenarios. They turn up as walking luggage in airport scenarios. At the worst level of practice, people get transformed into a kind of material inventory to be processed. The messy reality of people’s everyday life and dynamic need-states get smoothed out or abstracted. Whole sets of preconceptions sneak in unnoticed, framing the innovation brief.”
And here’s one from Chris:
“… my advice to a recent design graduate would be to embrace and enjoy the complexity. Get out of college and get a job. Don’t hang around in your school’s new ‘future design blah innovation blah lab.’ Don’t prostitute your services for free to get a toe in the door at IDEO, Humantific, Plot or even live|work. Go and work for a hospital, the government or a credit reference agency.
Hold on to the unique skills and perspective you have as a designer and apply them in strange but fruitful environments. You can, and will, make a real difference there.”