Integrating Speculative and Systemic Approaches into Service Design: To support service innovation that embeds future and systemic issues

Humans live in multiple social service systems. These social service systems are composed of multiple levels of services and service systems. Influenced by various systemic factors and system interconnections, designers face more complex systemic challenges and uncertain future challenges when dealing with these service issues. Therefore, to better deal with the systemic and future issues embedded in services, this paper explores the relationships between systemic and speculative approaches and service design; and also discusses how designers need to evolve their design capabilities to better adapt to complex systemic challenges and uncertain future challenges. This paper proposes the synthesis that systemic and speculative approaches, with their characteristics of systemic thinking, long-term perspective, and critical/reflective thinking, can cut into the service design process and help service designers to deal with more systemic and future-related problems through the application of relevant thinking and methods. Through literature review, the paper clarifies the relationships and possibilities between speculative and systemic approaches and service design, identifying shared concerns, complementary contributions, and gaps that need to be considered. Then proposes an extension of systemic design and the speculative approach to the service design process. Besides, through interviews with five design schools’ service design program leaders and comparing the programs, the paper also proposes five design capabilities that service designers should better evolve further.