Why Should We Teach Service Design and Social Innovation from a Humble Perspective: Experiences with communities at the margins

icked problems are present in societies from the Global North to the Global South such as displacement, dispossession and homelessness. These are indubitably key dimension of present time. The COVID-19 has deepened these problems. Such crisis requires us to consider challenges to scholars and professionals, regardless of knowledge area. Service design and design for social innovation are rooted in social issues and could be tools to address and mitigate these problems. Nonetheless, marginalised communities and dispossession remain at the margins in the service design and design for social innovation literature. From the analysis of two students’ projects, we critically examine the significant contributions of service design and social innovation methods and tools in such contexts. The concept of alterity and arts-based methods emerged as a pathway for building a humble perspective for service designers working with wicked problems in the context of marginalisation. The SEEYouth research project will allow us to conduct an in-depth exploration of this perspective and its potential for addressing these problems.