by Todd Wilkens

And maybe the end of “service design,” per se. With the advance of globalization and the increasing complexity of markets, businesses are struggling to remain competitive and successful. The rules of the game are changing and the key to navigating this complex and uncertain world is no longer simply to provide functioning and usable products. Rather, we need to deliver compelling experiences. This experiential approach along with the growing interconnection of people, products, and systems, means that it makes less and less sense to talk about designing anything but services. You can see this in the fact that companies are increasingly providing offerings across multiple channels and that the most successful and compelling products are actually product-service hybrids. But this is not a new phenomenon. Some of the most successful “products” of the past were hybrids as well. And the service and experience mindset has been the main driver of many of the most successful designs. This service mindset has serious implications for the practice of design as a whole. In particular it requires explicit systems thinking as well as an increased focus on empathy, context, and a holistic understanding of people. We’ll explore these trends through historical and contemporary case studies and projects.

About Todd Wilkens

Todd’s work has focused on everything from online communities to digital video to youth, religion, and culture. He is adept at working with people from different backgrounds to synthesize product, business, technology, and user needs into cohesive strategies and designs. He is also well-versed in social science theory and a wide-ranging toolkit of methods from ethnography and interviewing to statistical analysis and eye-tracking.

Todd speaks and publishes regularly on design research and human-centered design. He also teaches courses and workshops in design research, interaction design, information architecture, and sociology at professional events as well as at several universities and colleges.