Workshop on Service design in a climate emergency - What do digital services in a world of net-zero look like ?

hi @mrchrisadams @Kathryn and all

I am putting together this repository of materials that we can use to post on the event page and our edgeryders as well as our individual social media channels - to give would be participants a sense of what we are exploring. As well as entry point to join various relevant discussions already happening in different parts of the platform. I am updating it continuously but I thought it is good to post what is there already and add so we can start already…

Workshop on Service Design in a Climate Emergency

150 word description of the event in the form of an invitation to join us adapted for email

Our climate is changing, and kids are striking for the future every Friday and put simply, our house is on fire.

How can we respond as practitioners designing and delivering the services people rely on? And what skills will we need that we don’t have, and need to invest in learning?

We’ll need more than hope and courage if we want to rise to the scale of the challenge facing us - we’ll need to invest in specific skills, and learn to use an expanded vocabulary that includes concepts related to climate, carbon, and equity.

Join our workshop in Berlin on Friday 29th to figure out what service design might look like in world of net-zero, and identify what we’ll need to know as professionals to get there.

A summary article, also not more than 150 -200 words combining the insights/overview and good quotes from theses sources:

3 quote banners: Visual Materials here.

“Also, while user-centred design is increasingly common, we have few tools for designing for people who are not the primary users of services, a key consideration when designing for the wider environment. For example, Airbnb is a great example of user-centred design for the end user. It’s a less successful example of design for the neighbour of a person hosting an apartment, or less visible people, like the cleaners and other workers who are also part of the supply chain…”

3 Call-to-action Status updates: Visual Materials here.

Which skills would we like to have in the room?

  • Service design skills, particularly working in public sector in Europe, and private sector

  • Policy design and experience, particularly for delivering carbon reductions in government services

  • Digital skills, for implementing digitally mediated aspects of a service, like building digital platforms designed to support a channel shift away from manual ones that relied on paper

  • Skills and experience at working with vulnerable groups (or people from those groups themselves), often impacted by the unintended consequences of people taking steps to ‘green’ a service.

Are there specific organisations whose contributions would be helpful?

  • Do you know service designer who has experience facilitating events? Send them to us for a gig

  • Do you know anyone at TU Berlin who is working on “sustainable digitalisation”?

  • Do you know anyone from who has experience working with groups who are often vulnerable, and marginalised? Come join us at this workshop

  • Know anyone who is helping organisations understand how their efforts might unintentionally harm the people they are trying to help?

  • Do you know anyone who is building digital services that displace more polluting alternatives? Can you talk about the trade-offs you have to make when operating commercially?

  • Do you know anyone who is working at a mobility services company like Coup, Emmy etc. Join us!

@sarahs, What is your take on this as a Design & User Researcher with a focus on sustainable design? Do you have any concrete examples where you feel current tools or vocabulary lacking for the tasks of sustainable (service) design?

@Ahmad1 also, ahead of your workshop with Moroccan Municipalities I think you ought to have a look at this workshop on Service design in a Climate Emergency. The topic is highly relevant and there may even be scope for collaborations after the workshops…

3 Likes

Hi all - I’ve just tried to sign up for this event. I’ve no idea if I’ve been successful. Can someone let me know if I was or do I need to do something else?

1 Like

HI @rey_7! I’ve added you to a list for Friday and I’ve if you’re here then you’ve been successful - thanks for persevering :slight_smile:

The workshop sounds very interesting! Exploring the different layers of stakeholders that are involved in a world of net-zero. I just realized that this workshop will be conducted very soon, although its pretty last minute, hope my input can still be useful somehow.

Sustainability design entails continous efforts to develop, nurture, and stimulate meaningful interactions between people, nature, and the artificial. Interactions between these three tangible aspects of our world are complex as well as complicated because they are anchored to the past as well as the present. Try to look at your lunch meal today, and envision all the interactions had to happened for the meal to arrive in front of you.

These interactions involved people (individuals and collective, i.e. community, companies, organisations, states etc.), nature (e.g. resources extractions, waste ) artificial ( e.g. plates, table, building i.e. resource use, carbon footprint). Its a complex interactions that need systemic understanding and interventions.

From service design perspective, typical methods (also mentioned by @mrchrisadams earlier post) involved establishing boundaries for exploration, mapping the stakeholders involved, identifying personas and understanding their journey and experiences by mapping their interactions which also include their pain points along the journey. These understanding provide the basis to develop a specific or a combination of service/s : a solution that eliminates their pain points and improve the overall experience.

Co-creation techniques (similar to participatory effort) are often used in which stakeholders involved are invited to co-create the solutions together.

I wonder what are the methods you plan to you in this workshop?

2 Likes

@Kathryn and @mrchrisadams can you answer this?

I’m looking forward to following along with the reading and the responses online and look forward to the continuing discussion!

(I would love to make the event but have other commitments tomorrow)

Wishing you all a great workshop!

2 Likes

@mrchrisadams, have a look at this call from the science gallery:

https://opencall.sciencegallery.com/design?utm_source=Network+Email+Alerts&utm_campaign=c3e05d6d1b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_07_04_08_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0348a84edd-c3e05d6d1b-452633829

" Design makes worlds. It directs the traffic of humanity through the creation of cultural, social, and material space. But do we feel empowered to direct? To design?

Most moments of our existence are touched by design. We all sketch, we fashion trial balloons, we tinker with thoughts and concepts, we revise, we prototype, we analyze and critique, and we build. And then build again.

Design intersects with science and art. We design experiments for research, scientific visualizations, and genetic models. We design performances, texts, and communication. We design gardens, houses, and cities. We create small and large. We find beauty in experience and efficiency.

Design often mimics the intricate and perfect connections of healthy biological systems that nurture life. Yet design can also create destruction and chaos, or limit our participation and humanity. How might we explore this fantastic and perilous labyrinth of connections and implications bound up with art, science, and design?

The open call is an invitation to explore the world of design and its intersection with art and science. We invite proposals that address a wide range of subjects and themes, including the following:

POTENTIAL SUBTOPICS AND THEMES

  • What would a world without design be like?
  • How might design influence our vision and creative process? Our desires? Our identities and the identities of the world?
  • How could biodesign restructure, improve, and restore our lives, or damage and destroy them?
  • What might we learn from the ways that artists structure their studios, and the ways that scientists lay out equipment and material in their labs?
  • Could we design ways to have our consciousness and cognitive acts leave traces beyond the death of our body?
  • How does design expertise interact with a participatory design process? How can we design spaces where experts and non-experts build together?
  • Could we create a participatory process for designing the future?
  • How might design conjure up a beautiful, eerie, exciting, or creepy anticipation of the future?
  • How might we think about vernacular design?
  • What is the past and future of the relationship between nature, biology, and design?
  • How does design direct intentions?
  • How can we deal with the fact that design is both magical and dangerous?
  • How could design not suppress the chaotic, unexpected, improbable, and disruptive?
  • How might we design spaces and communities for highly mobile geographically nomadic groups of people?
  • How could we address the trauma of digital data and selves becoming commodified, transacted, and controlled and suppressed?
  • Could design guide a desirable transformation of society toward an equitable sustainable state?
  • How do the designs of our technologies reflect or challenge our biases?

SEND US YOUR PROPOSAL TO BE IN THIS EXHIBITION!

Experimentation, provocation and research are at the heart of SGD’s values and programs. This exhibition will explore the practice and concept of design through the lens of artists, psychologists, storytellers, digital gamers, molecular biologists, performers, neuroscientists, designers, computer scientists, nurses, engineers, musicians, mathematicians, architects, and young people. The list of possibilities is endless.

Your proposal could be a new or existing artwork, performance, workshop, digital intervention, research project, virtual reality game, or other activity. We strongly recommend that you keep our target audience of young people aged 15-25 years in mind and consider including interactive or participatory elements. We would love humor to feature in the exhibition. Check out our tips on what makes a good open call submission."

This might be interesting for quite a few of your workshop participants or even your workshop outcomes, or the workshop itself?

1 Like