Teaching Service Design: pedagogical reflections

Abstract

We present critical reflections from our teaching and learning, design research and knowledge exchange practices to posit a pedagogy of service design. A salient characteristic of this pedagogy is that we involve cohorts of postgraduate students in complex multi-stakeholder projects. We created the Service Futures Lab to provide infrastructure for these projects. When the Lab collaborates with courses across the university it bridges the requirements of the student curriculum with the requirements of our collaborators, aligning with university and our own research agendas and interests. We outline how the learning by doing approach of the Lab contributes to building a pedagogy of service design. We use three projects led by the Lab that involved students from MA Service Design between 2020 and 2022 to discuss how we apply the pedagogical principles we are positing, as well as reflect on the constraints, issues, and opportunities of such projects.