The Materials of Service Design

If Design is about forming materials, then what are the materials of Service Design? In this ground-breaking book, Johan Blomkvist, Simon Clatworthy and Stefan Holmlid explore this question by establishing a discourse around the materials of service design, discussing materials as a means to study what service design is and could be.

Exploring the contours and foundations of the field, this innovative book redefines the material and opens with an investigation of how service has been understood as a material in design. With insights from expert practitioners in the field, chapters then examine a vast library of materials, including social structures, touch-points, thinking, culture, time, organisations, conversations, data, human bodies and more. Making sense of this material mix, the book delves into the material of the immaterial and displays the diversified and expansive field of service design today. In doing so, it forms a starting point to go beyond reductionist ideas of the material-immaterial dichotomy and makes room for new constructivist perspectives.

Contributing to the development of education within service design, this insightful book will be invaluable for practitioners and course leaders looking to navigate a new path to service design. Founded in design as a knowledge intensive practice, it will also be transformative for the research of students and scholars of marketing, service design, design theory, and innovation studies.