The Design as intragroup conflict mediator

Abstract

Service Design presents new challenges in its practice as we widen the complexity of its activity scope. Among the many issues to be dealt with, complexity may be associated to carrying out multidisciplinary workgroups, where people from different areas of a company, social group leaders, specialists with specific knowledge, all have a say during the group process by applying their technical skills and distinct viewpoints to solve a problem. The dialectics that happen in such work debates generate conflict situations, which can be interesting creative drivers, thus requiring the designer to uphold a specific expertise to mediate them. This article proposes a course of action to mediate intragroup conflict in Service Design projects, supported by knowledge from the fields of Group Psychology and Topological Psychology.