AIGA Voice features an interview with my friend Phi-Hong Ha entitled Answering the Call to Service Design. She talks with Steven Heller about the “what” and the “why” of service design and delves a bit further into the “how.”

Phi-Hong is teaching a class on the subject next fall at SVA in New York and in this interview she considers three principles for learning and practicing service design:

  1. Embrace people, emphasizing the user-centered nature of the discipline across a wide range of stakeholders — not just customers but employees as well.
  2. Learn from others, emphasizing the cross-disciplinary nature of service design and the extensive cross-pollination required for most projects.
  3. Make it visual, emphasizing our strength in form-giving and holistic visualization when dealing with the intangible nature of experience.

Service design is still making in-roads into the design community here in the US and these kinds of interviews are a great way to get the word out. Way to go Phi!


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