Service design
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Decolonizing Service Design Ethics and Aesthetics
Abstract: Service Design draws heavily from ancient Greek Ethics and Aesthetics, beginning with the foundational theater metaphor that separates frontstage from backstage. When Service Design engages with cultures that do not cultivate the Greek canon, the decolonization challenge comes to the fore. People who work to decolonize their cultures wonder whether Service Design will remain […] - Apr 15, 2024 -
The Materials of Service Design: Human bodies
Secomandi, F., & van Amstel, F. (2023). Human bodies. In: Blonkvist, J; Clatworthy, S; Holmlid, S. The Materials of Service Design (pp. 167-172). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802203301.00032 - Feb 5, 2024 -
Service design as a practice of freedom in collaborative cultural producers
de Siqueira, I. L. M., & van Amstel, F. M. (2023). Service design as a practice of freedom in collaborative cultural producers. In Proceedings of the Service Design and Innovation Conference (ServDes 2023), Rio de Janeiro. pp. 315-325. https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203016 - Jul 18, 2023 -
Making work visible in the theater of service design
Capitalist service design is grounded on a theater metaphor that guides service designers to make work invisible, away from customer scrutiny and public accountability. In this way, service design contributes to hiding the extreme work exploitation that digital service workers undergo, generating a situation where workers can only reclaim their visibility through striking. If service […] - Feb 24, 2023 -
Service integration for suicide prevention (2022)
Service integration for suicide prevention is the final work of Barbra Eliza da Silva in her Graphic Design degree at UTFPR. Barbra heard from some friends who work in mental health services that the number of suicide attempts was skyrocketing in Curitiba. She decided to put her final work to help. The project aimed at facilitating […] - Dec 7, 2022 -
Ethics and aesthetics of the experience designed for the Other
Keynote addressed in the A & D Visitors Series, School of Art & Design, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, October 2022. This is a provocative talk on design ethics that might spark a debate with the audience. The presenter will show well-known design products and processes that promise to deliver unique experiences. His critique of these […] - Oct 9, 2022 -
SURU’BA (“good thing” in Tupi and “orgy” in Portuguese) is the final work of João Conrado Dembiski and João Victor Tarran in their Bachelor in Design at UTFPR. Inspired by anarchist and decolonial thinking, the duo designed a modular open-source furniture system that could be cheaply produced in Curitiba, the locality of their studies. Their […] - Jul 30, 2022 -
This is not a presentation about the best Service Design projects in Latin America. It is more like an attempt to rethink Service Design from a Latin American perspective, bringing to the fore the contradictions that are behind design problems and that are usually overlooked. In this guest talk, part of CIID‘s Service Design class […] - Sep 28, 2020 -
New business generates value through a provisional network of relations, including strategic partners, suppliers, and clients. Young entrepreneurs usually have a hard time understanding this point and visualizing their network of relations. The Business Value-Net Model begins with an ice-breaker of visualizing network relations using yarn. Then, it proceeds to model value-net using Lego, digital […] - May 18, 2020 -
Business model design innovation
This research develops a method for assessing the business potential of mobility innovations that are arising within and outside of Bosch, in an attempt to contribute to its Open Innovation effort. This will allow to discover innovations that have not yet been considered as such, to identify solutions that may generate value, to discover sustainability […] - Mar 22, 2020 -
Sustainable design (Design Theory 4) is a regular 30-hour course from the Design bachelor at UTFPR. My approach for this class was to avoid discussing sustainability as a technical issue and rather to deal with the political challenges of sustainability, the crisis of modernity, and the Anthropocene, in a similar way it was done in […] - Jun 11, 2019 -
Participatory program evaluation
In 2018, Catholic University of Parana set to revise all its undergraduate programs to find opportunities for more active learning. I was invited to create a workshop model to revise each course with the participation of its stakeholders. The undergrad courses of Pharmacy, Biotechnology, Veterinary Medicine, and Dentistry adopted my workshop model, which called for […] - Oct 31, 2018 -
Design ethnography with activity theory
Design ethnography is a field study method which aims at uncovering user needs and innovation opportunities. Through this method, anthropologists can help understand the context, bringing up semantic, emotional, and social issues that may represent innovation opportunities. However, most design ethnographies are not carried out by trained anthropologists. Design ethnography is typically conducted by designers themselves, […] - Oct 28, 2016 -
In the first lecture of my Design Thinking course, I gave a historical perspective on the evolution of the design object. According to my thesis work, the object of design expanded in the last century from complex entities to emergent performances, such as experiences, interactions and business. The characteristics of this object are: It includes the user behavior, as […] - Sep 16, 2016 -
PIBEP Entrepreneurial scholarship program
PIBEP is an innovative scholarship program offered by PUCPR. Students receive money and mentoring to develop their own business ideas. I codesigned the program with Business School professors, taught a design thinking workshop and mentored design-led startups. The program is intensive and fun. Students must work in multidisciplinary teams and test their ideas as soon as possible […] - Sep 13, 2016 -
HIPUC Health innovation program
HIPUC is PUCPR’s program to nurture an international ecosystem of health startups and innovators in Curitiba. The program was developed in partnership with Stanford University, Johnson & Johnson, Philips and others. I was responsible for organizing the Design Shop, an immersive training at Marcelino Champagnat hospital. The students studied the hospital activities and created innovative services inside the […] - Jun 13, 2016 -
The Smart Urban Mobility Lab (SUM-LAB) is an initiative by two local universities – the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR) and the Federal University of Technology Paraná (UTFPR) – and the University of Twente with the support of the City of Curitiba. Researchers from the partners will work together in the SUM-LAB to formulate the […] - Apr 20, 2016 -
The Transformative Potential of Game Spatiality in Service Design
Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. and Garde, Julia. Games to explore the possibilities of space and the space of possibilities in service design. Simulation & Gaming, 47 (5), 2016, p. 628-650. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878116635921 - Mar 4, 2016 -
PhD thesis – Expansive design: designing with contradictions
Quick intro: What is expansive design? Quick graphics: Sketching an expansive design definitionQuick contextualization: What is a contradiction and why it is relevant to design research? Abstract: This thesis looks at the practice of design as it emerges in architectural design and service design. The lens adopted considers design both as an activity as well […] - Dec 14, 2015 -
Organization change at a major hospital
Clinics Hospital of Paraná had problems to coordinate the work of the surgery unit, materials unit and the surgery center. The patients were already suffering from the bad effects of their political fights. I was called to conduct a pilot study if my design games could help overcome the struggle. The hospital was undergoing a major organization […] - Dec 13, 2015 -
Expansive design is a concept initially defined by psychologist Yrjö Engeström which I developed further in my PhD thesis. It means expanding the design activity towards the use activity, or in other words, connecting them together. This connection is characterized by co-creation; instead of merely producing objects for users, designers co-create objects with the users. […] - Nov 20, 2015 -
Regular discipline – 16 hs – Post-graduation in Digital Business – Positivo University In this course, students learn how to attract and retain users of a service. They develop their service ideas through a teaching game called Ideas Market, explained in the video below. The class becomes a studio for service design entrepreneurs. Low tech materials […] - Aug 11, 2015 -
The collaboration for use value
The basic assumption of capitalism that companies make money from valuable products is being challenged by recent market changes. Products are no longer considered valuable only for sales’ performance. They must perform well after the sales, i.e. in use, otherwise sales may drop. The use value (a.k.a. value in use) corresponds to the product applications found […] - Jun 10, 2015 -
The expansion of the design object: from materials to experiences
The object of design was once easy to grasp. If we look at the first Bauhaus curriculum, we see the prominent role the building materials played in the designer’s formation. The aspiring designer was supposed to master these materials and tranform them into aesthetical compositions. At this time, the materials were the design object: concrete, […] - Mar 9, 2015 -
Zerjav, V., Hartmann, T., & van Amstel, F. M. (2014). A leadership-as-practice perspective on design in architecture, engineering and construction projects: interaction analysis of a collaborative workshop. Engineering Project Organization Journal, 4(4), 1-13. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21573727.2014.970177 - Oct 21, 2014 -
Expanding the representation of user activities
Van Amstel, F. M.C., Zerjav, V., Hartmann, T., van der Voort, M. C., & Dewulf, G. P. (2015). Expanding the representation of user activities. Building Research & Information, 43(2), 1-16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.932621 - Jul 15, 2014 -
Movies related to ethnographic user research
I’m currently conducting interviews and observations for my PhD. As I go through them, some images come to my mind: the similar situations that I saw in particular movies. I compiled a list with the movies that I watched along the years related to the task of observing and interviewing users for design purposes. The […] - Jun 9, 2013 -
Use and design: two points of view
I’m following the CMI-NEN project in my PhD, a healthcare facility that combines research, education, and care services in one place. The project is very innovative because it links medical image research to care demand. The concept is to drive research with the actual use of diagnosing technologies, instead of just exploring what is possible […] - Jul 13, 2012 -
Medical Imaging Center (2011-2013)
The intervention had the goal of assisting practitioners to bridge the gap between the design activity and user activity in a Medical Imaging Center project, in the Netherlands. The center would have state of the art diagnosing machines based on techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET-MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), and […] - Jun 14, 2012 -
A card deck for collaborative planning user experience projects. Each card is a UX method, with the necessary inputs and the expected outputs. The cards can be organized in a linear fashion to represent the planned process. There are also cards for representing risks, expected delays, and extra human/financial resources. UX Cards enables pattern-based codesign […] - Nov 24, 2011