The role of creative approaches among service design projects

Many current social and service challenges are so complicated, or wicked, that linear approaches do not equate in tackling them. Service design is a field of design that endeavors to innovate service interactions using a holistic, human-centred, creative approach. Service design brings people together from various backgrounds beyond design, to work collaboratively on people-oriented projects. Internationally, service designs’ creative methods are being applied in varying corporate and social contexts from banks and restaurants to hospitals and airports. The diversity in approach to service design however means there has been no fixed set of working methods for practitioners. This paper looks to explore service design methods currently in use among the international design community and how they are being applied around the world. In particular, this paper discusses the role of creative approaches and the difficulties associated with defining those methods among complex service and social contexts