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Our ThinkingInclusive, Sustainable, Planetary, Systemic: The Path of Service Design in 2023 and 2024
The Service Design Global Conference (SDGC) is the annual event for service design professionals, bringing together thinkers, innovators, and practitioners from around the world. Having had the opportunity to attend both the 2023 and 2024 conferences, I was able to observe the evolution of service design over the past year. While digital transformation has long been the focal point, the 2023 and 2024 conferences marked the shift toward a broader scope, from human-centred design to planet-centred design, and a deeper exploration of the role service design plays in larger societal systems.
If you are reading this as a Service Designer, you might not feel like this is anything brand new. For those who are new to service design and what we do, I hope this can help you understand how we see services and what change is important.
From Digital Transformation to System Transformation
Over the past decade, service design has been instrumental in digital transformation across industries. By focusing on user experiences, service designers have changed how organisations operate and serve customers. However, both the 2023 and 2024 SDGC signalled a significant shift in focus: moving beyond digital transformation and into system transformation. This evolution reflects a growing awareness that many of today’s challenges—whether environmental, social, or economic—are deeply interconnected.
In 2023 Martin Jordan and Kara Kane, both experienced designers from UK Government Digital Services talked about 'The Long Slog of Public Service Design'. In the talk, they described how a long-term perspective can help designers eager for change in public services. They gave the example of changes to the Power of Attorney Bill in the UK, which had a big impact on a number of services. It took 11 years of iterative work for that law to be drafted, changed and passed in 2023. Their suggestion was to prepare designers for the idea that achieving some of their outcomes might take 50 years and that 'services aren't designed by one group of people but by multiple generations of teams'. This speaks to the way service design is spreading its influence out of digital to elements of the system to the policy behind it. This shift reflects a growing recognition that many of today's challenges are deeply interconnected and require holistic, system-wide solutions.
In 2024 Gaelle Le Gelard spoke about scaling the circular economy. The circular economy aims to eliminate waste. Instead of a product having an ‘end of life’, it is brought back for reuse, recycling or regeneration. Developing a circular product or service is a distinct shift in our current ways of working, and a system focus is essential to creating change. Gaelle described some of the barriers that favour linear systems (where things are made, used, and thrown away). These systems are often cheaper, easier to imagine, require less collaboration, satisfy our desire for convenience and are less complex to manage. What this means is service designers need more ways to influence outside of the core product development to make the circular economy a reality. We can use our skills to help organisations collaborate, deal with complex systems and drive appropriate ‘true costs’ for services, either through policy design or appropriate incentives. This circular way of thinking aligns with global efforts to address climate change as outlined in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. How we organise is going to be a really important part of how we achieve these goals.
From Human-Centred to Planet-Centred Design
The second key trend revolves around transitioning from a purely human-centred approach to a planet-centred one. Traditionally, service design has focused on human needs, motivations, and behaviours. However, the growing urgency of environmental issues has challenged this dominant view. Many sessions at both conferences discussed how service design must evolve to not only meet the needs of people but also the needs of our planet and cohabitants. This planet-centric approach is not just about environmental sustainability. It's part of a broader movement towards more inclusive and equitable design practices.
In 2023, incorporating sustainability into service design practices was a major talking point. Samuel Huber, in his talk, ‘Planetary Perspectives: Recalibrating Service Design for a Regenerative Future’, shared a model of how journey mapping could include the planet as a stakeholder, adapting our human-centric tools to become more planet-centric.
In 2024, the planet-centric design was brought to the forefront in the closing keynote of the conference by Coral Michelin. Our responsibility as part of the planetary system was emphasised by the creation of a mantra that we could all take away. ‘I am an interconnected being. Through my work and actions, I shape the world around me. I choose to shape it for good.’ It was taking a step further from adapting our human-centric tools to fit planetary stakeholders to redefining our way of recognising ourselves as part of nature itself. A perspective that is not new but is something that, as a society, we need to rediscover according to Michelin.
Serving Multiple Worldviews
A critical discussion that emerged in both 2023 and 2024 was the role of service design in perpetuating dominant worldviews. Service design, like many fields, has often catered to the needs and values of more powerful or privileged groups, leaving other perspectives underserved. The call for change was clear: the discipline must expand to serve diverse worldviews and experiences.
One of the talks that stood out to me in 2023 was a talk by KA McKercher. They shared their experience of being a new social innovation designer armed with their workshop templates, arriving to lead their first co-design workshop. During the workshop, one participant wrote on a post-it note 'We are not your problem to be solved', promptly got up and left. KA's message: 'good intentions are not enough'. Design, at its worst, maintains this uneven power balance and solves problems from the designer's perspective.
In 2024 Josina Vink talked further on this topic in their talk by creating a model around logic. Vink defines logic as ‘the underlying rationale that guides different modes of organising. They provide us with meaning and condition our thoughts and actions.’ Starting with this model as a base, Vink outlined seven key ways they were navigating logics in service design, which included; unpicking existing logics, protecting peripheral logics, exposing dominant logics, speculating shifts in logics, challenging design logics and amplifying uncommon logics.
Ultimately, no amount of design education or project experience can replace the value of lived experience. It’s a crucial factor when it comes to designing inclusively. At times, this means stepping up, and at other times, it means knowing when to step back and saying, t’s impossible to do this work effectively without a different perspective or logic leading the process.
Approaching the challenges of the future
The 2023 and 2024 Service Design Global Conference showed a significant desire to broaden service design’s scope. The discipline is moving beyond digital transformation, focusing on system-wide changes, planet-centred approaches, and more inclusive practices. These shifts show that service design is playing a growing role in addressing problems that can’t be solved by one group but by everyone working together. The conference is part of a growing trend of developing practitioners who can step outside of individual organisational goals, build relationships with others and aim to have an impact in the broader system. By embracing system-level thinking, sustainability, inclusivity, and resilience, service designers can be leading changes in how we work to address system-wide challenges.
Written by:
Alice Kennedy
Senior Service Designer
Alice has a wealth of experience supporting organisations to create and evolve their services. She has worked in various industries including healthcare, public sector, finance, and fem-tech. Alice is passionate about co-design and finding solutions in collaboration with users and organisations. Her experience spans all stages of a project with skills in thinking through the strategy to working with engineers to deliver final designs.
