There is a growing potential for service design in Belgium and a growing group of practitioners at service providers and in public and private organizations. Our chapter provides a platform to bring students, academics, practitioners and the people who need their expertise together, and to help the discipline to develop and integrate new perspectives.

 

Developing Service Design in Belgium

It is still early days for service design in Belgium:

 

  • Governmental institutions are often ahead of commercial organizations.
  • The discipline is not really embedded in education yet.
  • There is little shared vocabulary between customers and practitioners.
  • The holistic approach of service design often fails to result in design interventions, because of the complexity it involves.

 

How our chapter wants to contribute

The Belgian SDN chapter wants to:

 

  • Combine academic and practitioner experience.
  • Raise awareness about the role of service design in a service-based economy and society as a whole, and show real results that prove the benefits.
  • Promote cross-fertilization of service design, UX design, product design, interior design, behavioral design, business design, urban planning.
  • Serve as a touchpoint for other chapters and service design enthusiasts around the globe.

 

Stina Vanhoof
Stina Vanhoof - Service Designer at Knight Moves

I would love to see service design as a more established discipline in which different parties are involved. Bridging industry, design, and academia to share skills and knowledge on service design.

Wim Putzeys
Wim Putzeys - Service designer at Peel

There is a growing potential for service design in Belgium and a growing group of practitioners at service providers and public and private organizations. I believe our Chapter can provide a great opportunity to bring students, academics, practitioners and the people who need their expertise together, and to help the discipline to develop and incorporate new perspectives.

Ivo Dewit
Ivo Dewit - Design & doctoral researcher @ Product Development - UA|Design Sciences

I would love to see this network grow through practice and research on the design of product service systems: a combination of products and/or services, their unique interaction with the user and the experience it leverages. From early stage (FEI) ideation towards feasible market opportunities, let's build a Belgian baseline for well-designed products and services together!