sedes research - Köln International School of Design

sedes research is the centre for service design research at the Köln International School of Design. The director of the research centre is Prof. Birgit Mager, who has been professor of service design since 1995, and founded the research centre in 2006.
sedes research is the first international research centre in the service design field. Fundamental research and applied research are both undertaken here. Research should contribute so that services are useful, utilizible, and inspiring.

Further, national and international research projects will be formulated and accomplished. The centre offers students the possibility to collaborate as well as writing their thesis and to do a doctor’s degree in this discipline.

By numerous publications the results of our research work will be accusable for the public. Furthermore we utilize our competence for implementation of Events and advanced training activities in the subject area of Service Design.

sedes research in the university context is unique within its discipline. Aground of many common projects together with renowned companies and institutes we are in the position to revert to a comprehensive pool of experience during our work and to incorporate this.

Projects

• Gestures of Service

By considering service as a product the gesture can be seen as its design language. Effectiveness of form, colour and material are intensively explored and used in product design companies such as Apple, make visible just how profitable this knowledge is.The style of a product adds to its character - like the development of a corporate design and its public communication creates the market character. Service appears through the process of a multiple of gestures - in material and physical forms.However the gesture is hard to catch. It is not easy to measure, is interpreted according to the situation, and articulates itself predominantly in the interaction.In search of the gestures of service it will be attempted to catch the complexity of the moment, to comprehend their principles and to develop a map of its functions in the service.

• International Service Cultures

Services are no longer regionally bounded or restricted. They are goods of international trade that are developed, planned and designed accordingly. Today, the requirements for Service Design are changing – with the “industrialization” of Service - ideas such as insourcing, outsourcing and offshoring on the one hand – and with personalization, customization, quality, and a total customer orientation, on the other.
Within this dynamic environment, taking into account different cultural conditions is an enormous challenge. Admittedly there is little research and knowledge of the similarities and differences among “service cultures” in an international context. Knowledge gained through the experiences of organizational divisions, teams, or individuals frequently remains untapped by the corporation as a whole. Up to now, systematic research only exists to a very limited degree and is usually not available to the decision-makers in charge.
The research project “International Service Cultures” intends to address these gaps and to make a contribution to culture specific configuration and adaptation of service systems. The outcomes of the research and increased knowledge will support companies making hard decisions about service design and delivery and will ultimately influence service success.

• Levens Kracht

This summer, students at Köln International School of Design were asked by the City of Eindhoven to design services for street prostitutes in the Tippelzone of Eindhoven. Under Prof. Birgit Mager’s guidance, the project aimed to assist drug addicted women in the Tippelzone to increase self-responsiblity and improve their living conditions. Students and Prof. Mager developed a systematic service solution, Levens Kracht (Life Empowerment), which offers both short term and long term service solutions for the stakeholders around the Tippelzone, as well as the women.
KISD students created a yearbook that summarizes the On the Road project and the outcome, Levens Kracht. In the future, this yearbook will be co-created by the women working with Levens Kracht to address their issues and progresses.
June 25th 2008, the result of 'On the Road' project was presented to the citizens, and the members of the city council, who were extremely impressed with the concept of Levens Kracht and called for the future implementation of the service. Mary-Ann Schreurs, the chairwoman of the working group, Design of the Eindhoven City Council, strongly argued that the government should adopt service design approaches: putting people in the center and organize the government around them, not the other way around.

• The Art of Service

Complex services are often insufficiently illustrated, described and communicated with conventional methods. Established forms of communication in the area of service can fail on the two-dimensional level. The core of the service can then fall by the wayside. Counteracting this problem, there have been sporadic, intelligent approaches developed for service design within the last few years to work with analogue models and tools. For example, the storyboard is used in both visual arts as in the world of business to demonstrate time lapses.After a basic analysis of the different, current intersections between art and business, methods and visual presentation forms from various fields of art have been considered in detail and analyzed within this research project.The results gained will subsequently provide a basis to develop hypotheses that will have the potential to transfer to service systems. Afterwards, through analysis methods developed exclusively for this purpose, it will be clear which of these visual presentation forms contain the potential to satisfy the complexity of service.

• Unter Umständen

In this research-project, the situation of pregnant women will be intensively studied with the help of Service-Design techniques. The immersion into the women's world of experience and everyday life will lead to a deep understanding of their needs and problems.12 pregnant women and young mothers will be accompanied whilst shopping, visits to the doctor or to the authorities. Besides which, individual tools will be developed to permit the participants to document their pregnancy.Based on the insights gained, experiences and findings, first ideas and concepts for future advisory services and fringe benefits will be generated and visualized.

Publications

• Service Design: Design studieren

Prof. Birgit Mager's new publication is now available. "Service Design: Design studieren" is a textbook on Service Design in which Birgit Mager as well as reputed international writers introduce basics, fields of application and scopes of study of this young and expanding discipline. The book addresses predominantly students but is also a great gain for practitioners and managers in the service sector as well as all those interested in Service Design. So far, the publication is available in German only.
Order now!

• Levens Kracht

This summer, students at Köln International School of Design were asked by the City of Eindhoven to design services for street prostitutes in the Tippelzone of Eindhoven. Under Prof. Birgit Mager’s guidance, the project aimed to assist drug addicted women in the Tippelzone to increase self-responsiblity and improve their living conditions.
KISD students created a yearbook that summarizes the On the Road project and the outcome, Levens Kracht. In the future, this yearbook will be co-created by the women working with Levens Kracht to address their issues and progresses.
The Levenskracht Yearbook 2008 can be ordered for a nominal charge of Euro 3.80 (Mailing Expenses Germany 1,50 Euro, other 3 Euro). Please write a Mail to: info@service-design.de

• Designing Public - Perspectives for the public

Birkhäuser Verlag, 2008

In moving freely among the public and private spheres, design forces us to ask whether the distinction we still draw between them adequately describes our world today. The authors assembled in this volume - including, among others, Prof. Birgit Mager - refelct on this question and provide a wide array of insights into its answer.

• 10 Service Design Basic Cards/li>

SOLD OUT - We will inform you if the reprint is available as soon as possible.

This bilingual set is a kind of survival kid for service designers containing 10 cards. Each of them introduces one basic rule for the service design process. Prof. Birgit Mager, 2006, Cologne, ISBN: 3-9808573-7-9.
The 10 Service Design Basic Cards can be ordered here.

• Service Design – A Review

The publication Service Design - A Review is a collection of papers and and excerpts of former publications by Birgit Mager, dealing with the topic of service design. Prof. Birgit Mager, 2005.

Contact:
info@sedes-research.de
http://www.sedes-research.de