Abstract
Building on the lead author’s experiences as a design practitioner in the Swedish public sector, we argue that Service Design as practiced today is often failing to attend to the design and delivery of actual public services. We explore the blank space we perceive between the rhetoric of evangelists for Service Design in the public sector in Sweden, the reality of working as a Service Designer in the Swedish public sector, and the reality of materialising public services. To explore this blank space, we present a number of generative conceptual metaphors for what, if not designing services, Service Designers or those adopting practices in the name of Service Design might be doing. We share a selection of these, in the hope of engaging the NORDES community in helping (re)integrate the rich tradition and conceptual frames of design as a materialising practice with the practice of designing and materialising public services.
Keywords
Service design, Public sector design, Metaphor, Generative metaphor, Role of designer
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.93
Citation
Bisset, F.,and Kuštrak Korper, A.(2023) What did we actually design here and what purpose did it serve? Some generative metaphors for understanding service design in the Swedish public sector, in Holmlid, S., Rodrigues, V., Westin, C., Krogh, P. G., Mäkelä, M., Svanaes, D., Wikberg-Nilsson, Å (eds.), Nordes 2023: This Space Intentionally Left Blank, 12-14 June, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.93
Conference Track
exploratorypapers
What did we actually design here and what purpose did it serve? Some generative metaphors for understanding service design in the Swedish public sector
Building on the lead author’s experiences as a design practitioner in the Swedish public sector, we argue that Service Design as practiced today is often failing to attend to the design and delivery of actual public services. We explore the blank space we perceive between the rhetoric of evangelists for Service Design in the public sector in Sweden, the reality of working as a Service Designer in the Swedish public sector, and the reality of materialising public services. To explore this blank space, we present a number of generative conceptual metaphors for what, if not designing services, Service Designers or those adopting practices in the name of Service Design might be doing. We share a selection of these, in the hope of engaging the NORDES community in helping (re)integrate the rich tradition and conceptual frames of design as a materialising practice with the practice of designing and materialising public services.