Monday, April 14, 2008

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed


Image: A page from the booklet "Design for Services" launched by SEE Design Network of Design Wales, Cardiff. Full pdf files can be downloaded from the links below.

Service Design for India: Change in Design & Management Schools needed

Service Design is an emerging discipline that lies between the various fields of Design and Management. It is the cusp of both these major disciplines, which in India have rarely met or exchanged expertise in an educational setting. Design schools do not teach management in depth nor do management schools teach about design, leave alone design management. We have thousands of management schools in India when the pressing need is for the creation of experts who can innovate great services across a huge number of sectors of our economy. In my view design is needed critically in as many as 230 sectors of our economy and I have written about these in the past.

Across the world many management schools have started embracing design and innovation as a core offering to their students and in this the charge is led by the Rotmans School of Management, Toronto and a less known school in Scandinavia called the KaosPilot, both of which have been covered in previous posts on this blog. In the 80’s the London School of Business had produced a book on Design Management and at both the Stanford University, USA and the University of Industrial Arts, Helsinki, there have been concerted efforts to bring together Design, Technology and Management through a planned series of projects that bring together faculty and students from all these disciplines in a transdisciplinary format. The Design Council, London had spearheaded an initiative called RED where a series of innovative design and management exchanges had led to the development of some very interesting new services, all designed by keeping users in mind. The Design Wales too has been working with SME’s and local businesses to assist them to refine their service offerings and their booklet on service design is a very refined offering that can be downloaded as a pdf file. (see link below)

Several unusual experiments have been taking place in this space and the work done at the Mayo Clinic, USA is one that stands out in using the IDEO methodology to improve the service offerings of the medical establishment and their hospital chain, which has been covered in an earlier post on this blog. This year the KaosPilot school from Sweden has deputed 35 of their students to spend their “Outpost” session of three months in the field at Mumbai, and they are in the city till the end of May 2008 to explore the creation of new and compelling services that can build local entrepreneurship in a number of areas of service offerings from transportation to health systems. The Welllingker School of Management in Mumbai has started a masters programme in Design Management and NID Ahmedabad has a programme on offer called Strategic Design Management, but these are very little for a huge country like India and many of the other management schools should consider offering such programmes if we are to make headway in improving our services with the use of design and innovation, all managed by expert hands that are trained to do the job. The National Design Policy must take this into account when we try and take design forward in India.

There are many online resources that provide insights into service design and its emerging boundaries and some of these are listed below for immediate access:



1. Design Council, UK: Service Design

2. Rotmans School of Management, Toronto: Integrative Thinking

3. KaosPilot, Denmark: Design of New Businesses

4. Service Design: Wikipedia: Definition and links

5. Service Design Research: Rich Collection of Papers

6. ServiceDesign.org: Resources hosted by live/work UK

7. Design Wales, Cardiff: SEE Design Journals

8. SEE Design, Design Wales, Cardiff: Service Design booklet Download pdf files links: Part 1: Part 2:

9. Design Management Institute

10. Domus Academy - Business Design Department

6 comments:

  1. Hi M P Ranjan,

    and thanks for sharing this overview on service design! Just a sidenote on the first link titled 'launched by SEE Design ...'

    As it seems this link is dead ;-(

    Keep posting and sharing as well as greetings from Germany,
    Prof. Ralf Beuker.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Prof. Ralf Beuker

    Thank you for pointing it out. Yes, the link has been corrected now. I also checked out your "What is Design Management" blog post". Very Interesting work.

    Prof M P Ranjan
    from my office at NID

    ReplyDelete
  3. this is a really, really valid point. i wish many CEOs & managers are reading this.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I studied design management from UK and wrote my thesis on service design in 06. I would be honoured if you would kindly take a look at it.

    maithilibanerjee@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Ranjan,
    Good to know your thoughts on Service design for India. I am currently participating in the "The Creative Waves COTEN – Service Designing Education project" which is being conducted as a collaborative and virtual environment.I am sure this learning will help and hope to get some more insight from you on this topic in future.
    Regards
    Raman

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  6. Hi Prof. M P Ranjan
    I recently completed my Maters in Design Management from UK choosing the pathway of Service Design. I did my final thesis working with Worcestershire County Council to transform their services through the approach of service design. My thesis topic was 'how can Service Design drive local authorities to an efficient and effective service transformation ?'
    My next endeavour is to introduce the concept of service design in India in as many sector as I can and make people move towards building better experiences.
    Trying to build a network of people in India with similar interests. Good to hear thoughts on Service Design from one of the D elites in India. Thank you.

    dpk.khetan@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete

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