Unmaking the user journey. Fostering alternative Service Design futures
Abstract
This paper bridges the discussion on a more ethical Service Design practice with the one on Dominant Design. It points out the neo-liberalist and late-capitalist roots of Service Design, which are often a barrier to envisioning ways for the discipline to be more inclusive and sustainable. A closer analysis of the user journey, the backbone of Service Design practice, highlights its critical structural issues and how it informs potentially harmful processes and outcomes. The exclusive focus on user and human-centredness prevents service designers from embracing an ecosystem, plural and antihegemonic practice.
Keywords
antihegemonic practices; dominant design; human-centredness; service user journey
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203041
Citation
Maffei, S.,and Del Gaudio, C.(2023) Unmaking the user journey. Fostering alternative Service Design futures, in Carla Cipolla, Claudia Mont’Alvão, Larissa Farias, Manuela Quaresma (eds.), ServDes 2023: Entanglements & Flows Conference, Service Encounters and Meanings, 11-14th July 2023, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203041
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Unmaking the user journey. Fostering alternative Service Design futures
This paper bridges the discussion on a more ethical Service Design practice with the one on Dominant Design. It points out the neo-liberalist and late-capitalist roots of Service Design, which are often a barrier to envisioning ways for the discipline to be more inclusive and sustainable. A closer analysis of the user journey, the backbone of Service Design practice, highlights its critical structural issues and how it informs potentially harmful processes and outcomes. The exclusive focus on user and human-centredness prevents service designers from embracing an ecosystem, plural and antihegemonic practice.