Start Date
6-10-2025 9:00 AM
End Date
8-10-2025 7:00 PM
Description
This paper presents a speculative framework for service design education, practice, and research in light of emerging technologies. It examines the evolution of service design through stages, from its foundations to a “thinking” era, and proposes a model for “Service Design 2.0” that considers industry-led, human-centred, and information driven approaches. The paper explores future trends in service design practice, emphasizing socio-technical systems thinking and learning systems. Design research is discussed in terms of evolving user-designer interactions, moving toward symbiotic relationships where designing and using become intertwined. Finally, the paper advocates for a balanced design education that integrates arts, engineering, computer science, and humanities, while also introducing Critical Design not merely as a counter-perspective, but as a vital mode of inquiry for questioning the ideological assumptions embedded in socio-technical systems. The study considers both affirmative-technological and critical-humanistic outlooks.
Citation
Lee, Y.(2025) From Affirmative-technological to Critical-humanistic Tech Trends: A speculative Framework for Service Design Futures.. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/servdes/servdes2025/researchpapers/54
From Affirmative-technological to Critical-humanistic Tech Trends: A speculative Framework for Service Design Futures
This paper presents a speculative framework for service design education, practice, and research in light of emerging technologies. It examines the evolution of service design through stages, from its foundations to a “thinking” era, and proposes a model for “Service Design 2.0” that considers industry-led, human-centred, and information driven approaches. The paper explores future trends in service design practice, emphasizing socio-technical systems thinking and learning systems. Design research is discussed in terms of evolving user-designer interactions, moving toward symbiotic relationships where designing and using become intertwined. Finally, the paper advocates for a balanced design education that integrates arts, engineering, computer science, and humanities, while also introducing Critical Design not merely as a counter-perspective, but as a vital mode of inquiry for questioning the ideological assumptions embedded in socio-technical systems. The study considers both affirmative-technological and critical-humanistic outlooks.