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The latest book on [design thinking] is Designing for Growth, a “design thinking toolkit for managers” and it provides a pretty good snapshot of how people are thinking about the discipline right now. Namely, that the reins of design thinking lie firmly in the hands of executives. In this world, design thinking is shorthand for the process implemented in a more creatively driven type of workshop, one involving visual thinking, iteration and prototyping. In this world, you don’t have to be a designer to be a design thinker, and the process has been codified as a repeatable, reusable business framework.

This is all, arguably, fine. But mostly it unwittingly highlights the true tension at the heart of the design thinking debate. A codified, repeatable, reusable practice contradicts the nature of innovation, which requires difficult, uncomfortable work to challenge the status quo of an industry or, at the very least, an organization. Executives are understandably looking for tidy ways to guarantee their innovation efforts -- but they'd be better off coming to terms with the fact that there aren’t any.

Helen Walters of Doblin on the challenges of integrating design thinking into business.

Innovation manifesto from Idris Mootee, head of "b-school + d-school" firm Idea Couture.

From finance to healthcare to media, New York’s economy is primarily driven by services. Yet our understanding of what design offers is rooted in products and places rather than how those things operate or how people use them — design has traditionally concerned itself with goods, not services. Only in the past decade or so have designers been actively reconceptualizing what it means to interact with and help shape services. According to Professor Birgit Mager, who runs the Cologne-based Service Design Network, “Service design addresses the functionality and form of services from the perspective of clients. It aims to ensure that service interfaces are useful, usable, and desirable from the client’s point of view and effective, efficient, and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view.”

In particular, services require designers to empathize with users, to understand interactions as a series of “touchpoints” and to develop a holistic understanding of the ways in which our relationships to services govern everyday life. The multiple ways this emerging field of practice relates to the rest of the design field are still in formation. So I sat down with several leading designers and researchers from universities in the US and Europe to start a conversation about what service design is, where it came from and where it is going. This interview expands on an event, “Service Design Performances” (PDF), which was held at Parsons The New School for Design in late May. The event, organized by the DESIS Lab, is the first in a series of activities around the topic of service design that are taking place in New York in the coming months.

Design principle 1

Walkable streets and human scale blocks. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 2

Pedestrian-oriented building configurations. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 3

Bike friendly networks. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 4

Transit-oriented streets and neighborhoods. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 5

Mixed-use blocks, neighborhoods, and districts. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 6

Integrate open space and public services. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 7

Energy efficient buildings and systems. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Chenggong illustrative plan

The illustrative plan for the central district of Chenggong, China shows the mryiad of uses in the new town. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Principles of urban design, from a city planning project Peter Calthorpe did for Chenggong, China.

New identity by thelab.

Fellow Worldchanging alumni Dawn Danby and Jer Faludi created this great video (with the help of Free Range Studios) explaining principles of systems thinking as they relate to design and manufacturing -- part of Autodesk's Sustainability Workshop series.