Service Design Programme

Below is a roundup of service innovation conferences and events happening in the UK and abroad in 2012. Please get in touch if you are running a service innovation conference and would like us to add it to the list.

To see the full list of Service Innovation Conferences 2012 click here.

We publish a service design newsletter every month with interesting content from the website as well as updates and relevant news.

Find out how to subscribe to the Service Design Newsletter here.

Hello, my name’s Chris and i’m very happy to be joining the Service Design Programme. Over the past few years i've been running a service design consultancy in Bristol called IMSD and have worked on projects in the public/private sector for the likes of Oxfam and Bristol City Council as well as numerous SMEs in the financial services sector. Recently, i helped Bristol City Council engage local communities around the future of their library service.

Read all of Chris' introduction here.

I recently gave an interview about the Service Design Programme to the Design Silesia newsletter. It's a cool publication that gets inserted into the business section of the city newspaper once a month. Anyway, I though this may be of interest to some of you, happy reading.

Read the full 'Design Silesia Newspaper Article' article here.

The UK Government has recently (3rd April 2012) published a list of 10 digital service design principles, and what’s more they are really rather good.

Read the full '10 Design Principles' article here.

We’re really pleased to announce that our Service Essentials workshop for business has been short listed for the 2012 Design Week Awards in the category of service design.

Read the full 'Service Design in Wales' article here.

NESTA (National Endownment for Science Technology and the Arts) have just launched a new call called Destination Local for innovative ideas around what they call 'next-generation hyperlocal media services'. This is an excellent opportunity for design agencies interested in developing their expertise in the field of service design through a structured funding call.

Read the full 'Service Innovation Funding' article here.

Uncommon Service is a new book written by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss on Harvard Business Review Press. The core argument of the book is that businesses can't afford to deliver five star service all of the time (unless of course you're charging 5 star prices). Therefore companies should focus their resources on the few things that customers really value.

Read the full 'Designing Uncommon Service' article here.

Over the past few months we've been talking a lot about design agencies that want to move into the field of service design and helping them get 'Pitch Ready'. Informal comments from the Design Council about 'a lack of service design agencies' as well as feedback from friends in other areas of the UK have highlighted the need to turn service design awareness into service design competency.

Read the full 'Getting Pitch Ready' article here.

We've been working with Design Silesia over the past few months to help deliver a public service innovation project in the city of Katowice. Last November we held interviews with designers, researchers and civil servants to find our project team. Then in December we opened applications from public services in the city to become a demonstration site for this new methodology.

Read the full 'DE-SERV Video' article here.