Service design is used to improve or create better services. It can transform environments, enhance communication or improve experiences. Service designers use people-centred approaches and co-design methods to create meaningful user experiences and deliver effective and sustainable solutions. This course is meant as a practical introduction to the field of service design and will provide tools and methods to designing services. The course will suit non-designers working in service industries as well as creative professionals looking to move into this emerging discipline. In fact, anyone interested in creative problem solving approaches and applied design thinking would also benefit.

You will be working individually and in small teams engaging with practice based activities and responding to a client brief. You will engage with a specific challenge and design a service-based proposal, which will be presented at the end of the course. Visiting service design practitioners from leading European agencies will share their professional experience with the course participants providing mentoring support and workshops. In the past years we invited practitioners from thinkpublic, live work, Participle, Engine, Uscreate, FutureGov, Sidekick Studios, Claro Partners, the Helen Hamlyn Centre and Design Against Crime Research Centre. A networking event at the end of the course will give the students the opportunity to meet the local service design community.

Please note:  Because of the Bank Holiday on 26 August, Course 2 (27/08/2013 - 06/09/2013) will run 10.00-17.15 Tuesday to Friday in week 1 and 10.00-16.00 Monday to Friday in week 2.

Vincenzo Di Maria is the co-founder of 'commonground, the place where design meets positive social change'. Vincenzo studied Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins where he also collaborates with the Design Against Crime Research Centre. In the past years he has been working internationally on a number of different projects that aim to generate positive social change through service design practice. www.commongroundpeople.com

Jonas Piet is an experienced service designer and creative social entrepreneur. Jonas has worked at participle and Engine Service Design in London, before moving back to the Netherlands. He works as an independent consultant on public and private sector projects, as well as on a social start-up Homeless SMS. www.linkedin.com/in/jonaspiet

Emma Gasson is a Social Designer with over six years experience working on projects which aim to tackle social challenges, at home and abroad. Working directly in communities to co-design and implement real solutions, Emma has led projects from tackling unemployment in Cornwall; homelessness in Los Angeles; health in Sri Lanka and child poverty in North London. Her work has primarily been with thinkpublic, as well as more recently as a freelance consultant. www.emmagasson.com

Alternative Dates and Times
Many of our courses are repeated throughout the year. If the above dates is not suitable for you, or there are no dates showing for this session, then please choose an alternative session.