Emerging Systemic Turn in Service Design

This chapter explores emerging turn in the service design research and education paradigm. There is a higher recognition of addressing the systems and complexities in services. The data was collected by a literature review, a workshop held at the Service Design and Innovation (Servdes) Conference in 2023, and expert interviews. The thematic analysis shows that service design thinking has expanded its complexity, thus including different or sometimes even divergent directions. Having a broad spectrum of skills makes it possible for service designers to operate as agents in the design system and analyse this front holistically. From the systemic view, service design itself can be investigated as a design system. This helps us understand how to develop design education, and the interviews shed light on this. Positionality can also help in analysing different systemic stances that are complex and plural, this complexity creates pressure for education to keep up with the speed of transformation and change.