SD_ATX
since 2016
The Inception
Service Design has been getting an increasing amount of buzz in the design community. Understandably, it is a niche design discipline, uncommon to come across, but seemingly something that can be adapted to from neighboring disciplines. After moving to Austin fresh out of college, two fellow SCAD-alums and myself saw an opportunity. Instead of being aggravated by generalists adopting “service design” as their own and watering down it’s value, we thought we could get ahead of the craze by starting our own outlet.
The goal was and continues to be, to introduce service design to interested parties and offer a place for experimentation and learning with real concrete design exercises in a workshop-style environment.
The Structure
Our group cycles between four core themes for structuring our events; research, strategy, prototyping, and mapping.
In addition, we developed a longer workshop experience, called a Service Hustle, in response to the Global Service Jams, in order to facilitate much more learning, co-creation with real users, and creating more applicable, valuable design work. We ran our first Service Hustle focused on Homelessness in June 2018. We are currently looking to replicate for other challenges in the coming months.
The Team
Myself! Long time advocate for "making service design work for you" and I love bringing that to our community. My favorite component of this project is regularly creating equally appealing design prompts and workshop scenarios that facilitate learning and exploration of abstract concepts to new and experienced "servies".
Lincoln Nieger, is very passionate about teaching the many angles of service design, ideating on interesting ways to apply service design, and ensuring outcomes are tangible and actionable.
Jo-Yee Pang, an interaction and service designer at Gensler, in Austin, who is an incredibly organized, driven, and studied professional that loves bringing structured, professional, and comprehensive Meetups to our design community.
The Meetup
Since January of 2016, this meetup has run (almost) monthly, some months being more robust than others. To peruse the collection of past events, please see (and join) our MeetUp Group!
We also have a facebook group if that is more your style!
Check it out. I'd say, for as many times as I've taught content at a meetup event, I always learn more from the many insights our attendees share!