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The firsT Master’s Degree on service Design aT The PoliTecnico di Milano

i eDition 2013/2014www.polidesign.net/servicedesign

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The service design master’s degree program was founded in response to the growing demand for specific professional qualifications (designers, consultants, and creative directors) in enterprises and the public-sector. Professionals who can handle the complexity of service design are actively sought after.

The structure of the economy that creates wealth in developed countries has been changing over recent decades, inexorably shifting the economic barycenter from manufacturing goods to supplying services. This era of change has gone hand in hand with changes in lifestyle, customs, and the culture of consumption. The transformation, combined with the empowering effect of technology, has brought about new links in relations and in communication, which has helped to establish what is known as the service economy.

Redefining the experience of daily life within the service society is going to mandate updating and broadening organizations’ design, production, and distribution skills. Service design operates in this context by offering an integrated, multidisciplinary design approach to create solutions whose tangible and intangible aspects intermingle (for example, the communication and value identity or the physical and virtual touchpoints that make up the outward expression of the service). So, service design provides systemic, complex solutions that materialize through particular forms of service experience or service interaction, incorporating user viewpoint into the redesign of business or institutional offerings.

For this reason, the Service Design Master’s program is proposing new education itineraries that include analyzing the user and analyzing user participation in the design and interaction processes leading up to final delivery. This route integrates general theory with methodology (tools and design approaches) and with hands-on experimentation (executive design and service prototyping).

Stefano Maffeithe

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Recent yearshave witnesseda transformaion in lifestyles, customs, and the culture of consumption...

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Master in

service Design

The Politecnico di Milano, through its Consorzio POLI.design, devote a first upper-level specialist training program to service design. This Master’s program provides international training, held completely in English, for students and professionals interested in honing professional skills for private- and public-sector services.

Rising to the challenge of the marketplace, POLI.design is offering a new training program devoted to service design, service organization, and service management, all the way to final delivery. The idea behind the Service Design Master’s is rooted in an awareness of the far-reaching changes that have affected supply and demand for service products among companies and government agencies, radically altering the context for professional skills and company capabilities. These changes have made it imperative to train new professionals who can understand and manage new models of service experience and service interaction (physical and virtual touchpoints).

The training program relies on faculty who represent Italian and international excellence in the university and professional field. It consists of training modules in theory, methodology, and design, followed by a trainee internship, for an overall duration of 12 months, with three-day-a-week mandatory full-time attendance. Upon successful completion of the final exam, students earn a Politecnico di Milano university Master’s degree in Service Design.

The future service designer trained in this Master’s program will be able to integrate strategic and organizational knowledge with design and production skills to instantiate modes of connection with end users and with the context in which services are delivered.

“SERVICE DESIGN addresses the functionality and form of services from the perspective of the client. Service designers interpret needs

and behaviours and transform them into potential future services

by creating, visualizing and choreographing solutions”

[Birgit Mager, 2008]

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Candidates/ObjeCtivesThe Service Design Master’s is limited to a maximum of 30 enrollees for each edition. Candidates are selected on the basis of their transcripts, résumés, and an interview, which may be held telephonically.

The program is open to candidates with a university degree in design, architecture or engineering, as well as to those whose major is in a non-polytechnical discipline for whom Service Design subjects may provide a meaningful complement to existing professional experience. The Service Design Master’s does include an initial segment designed to level basic skill sets in service-design disciplines.

In terms of aptitude, the program favors highly motivated candidates and students who have good creative and relationship skills, lively curiosity, critical thinking, and pragmatism.

Conditional admission may also be granted:

- to students whose university degree will be awarded only after a final exam or thesis defense that takes place after the start of the Master’s program;

- to students with foreign university degrees whose validation process is underway but not completed.

Admission to the Service Design Master’s program may also be granted to students whose university degree was awarded under the old Italian accreditation regime or by a foreign entity, subject to validation, submitted in the original with an Italian translation authenticated by consular authorities in the country of issuance and certified for local legal equivalence.

In such cases, the purpose of the Master’s program is to:

- complement and reinforce essential skills with theoretical points of reference and practical activities for those whose background is in the humanities;

- provide the specialist orientation needed to hone design and criticism skills for those whose background is in design;

- and supply the tools that help develop and refine professional experience for those who have already begun careers.

PrOfessiOnal QualifiCatiOns/OutCOmesThe Service Design Master’s program trains specialists in the field of designing services for the private and public sectors. It aims to develop experts and consultants who bring with them a cultural, design vision for service initiatives and who know how to design, manage, and organize the process of conceiving and creating a service. The program strives to build specialist skills and to enable innovation and entrepreneurship in this field.

After completing their training, students will be able to:

- define systemic innovation models for services;

- use theoretical and critical skills to identify design fields suited to orienting and defining the project’s prerequisites and to operating in complex socio-technical system;

- use observation and analysis of user experience to determine a user-centered vision of complex interaction processes (human, technological, environmental, and social);

- use specialist service-design tools and know how to manage their adaptation or redesign;

- manage all the phases of conceiving, designing, developing, and implementing a service in an advanced perspective that extends to participatory and co-design approaches;

- foster self-starting entrepreneurship in the service industry.

Multiple professional outcomes are available for service designers upon completion of training. They can be catalogued according to the various contexts and roles that reflect a complex, potentially stratified market like the market for services. These translate into job titles and qualifications such as:

- service designer as specialist consultant designing services in a design studio;

- service designer as consultant or employee of government organizations, research centers, agencies or administrations;

- service designer as consultant or employee of private-sector organizations, research centers, enterprises or institutions;

- service designer as independent entrepreneur (or “startupper”).

Employment opportunities potentially extend into other sectors of the economy and fit into a variety of possible occupational contexts, such as banking, insurance, healthcare, social work, transportation, retailing (in a variety of segments), IT-based services, and third-sector endeavor (linked to social innovation).

master in

service Design

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The complex nature of conceiving, producing, and delivering a service calls for a broad, multifaceted skill set containing certain strong points that can be leveraged:

- solid, intricate culture of innovation;

- capacity for creative thought and action in various contexts where opportunities arise in the market for services;

- specific capacity for analyzing and designing interaction situations (on a macro-micro scale, between front office and back office);

- capacity for creative and cultural exchange on matters of social innovation and of communication networks or technological platforms.

Consequently, this Master’s program relies on an education model that joins general skills and methodological knowledge with a series of intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary in-depth modules.

learning itineraryThe Service Design Master’s degree program grants 60 credit units, equivalent to 60 ECTS credits recognized throughout the European Union. The needed skills will be acquired through a highly experimental approach divided among classroom lessons, seminars and a series of multidisciplinary design laboratories in a variety of formats (known as Lectures, Enzymes, Service Design Pills, Service Jams, Service Design Workshops, and Service Design and Prototyping Studio). Students will thus encounter design issues that belong to diverse service segments, such as: banking, healthcare, retailing, publishing, energy, telecommunications, transportation, tourism, and government. This enhances both the breadth of disciplinary issues and the capacity for teamwork.

The training program leads students to an understanding of the entire process of designing services, from the initial concept to its prototyping. The capability to manage complexity, know-how for acting upon different design levels (processes, products, and interaction), and a capacity for creativity and vision rooted in familiarity with the dynamics of contemporary society are among the features of a service designer’s professional practice.ronterà nella sua pratica professionale.

The learning modules are distributed in the following structure:

1. Theory ClassesClassroom lessons (lectures), supplemented in some cases by practice sessions, are of two main types:

- Theoretical and critical courses provide an introduction to the discipline of service design. These include the “Enzymes,” which are short seminars jointly organized by master’s students

and faculty that bring in keynote speakers (two to four hours on average).

- Methodological and instrumental courses include lessons and seminars devoted to the processes, tools, and approaches used in service design.

sUbjects anDteaching MethoD

The complex nature of conceiving, producing, and delivering a service calls for a broad, multifaceted skill set...

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2. Design Learning

This part of the program includes the following learning activities:

- 4 Service Design Workshops are to be organized jointly with specific companies, organizations or players in the service industry.

- 2 Service Design Pills; these are targeted seminars that delve deeper into approaches, tools, and themes related specifically to a service-design project (such as: service identity, interior design for services, physical computing, tinkering, quick-and-dirty prototyping, and intellectual property and licensing).

- 2 Service Jams (mini-workshops) focused on service idea generation.

- 1 Service Design and Prototyping Studio involves students in designing a service form its conception to its prototyping. The service’s final design will be laid out in the Master’s thesis required for graduation.

3. Other Training Requirements

To notch with this theoretical and practical teaching, an internship of at least 475 hours extends students’ training experience at the same companies and organizations with whom research and design work was carried out during the academic year. Final laboratory work will be preceded by a period of Counseling held concurrently with the internship research that students will carry out with the assistance of POLI.design staff and the Ufficio Coordinamento Formazione. The Counseling aims to aid students in determining the design topic on which to prototype the service whose detailed description will make up their final Master’s theses. Counseling and internship-research work will be closely linked so as to foster students’ opportunity to develop their thesis design jointly with the organization at which they are performing their internships.

subjeCts andteaChing methOd

month 1 month 6 month 12

lectures +service designwarm up

MODULE 1

MODULE 2 MODULE 4 MODULE 6 MODULE 8

MODULE 3 MODULE 5 MODULE 7

lectures +workshop #1

pills +enzimi

pills +enzimi

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Jam +enzimi

lectures +workshop #2

lectures +workshop #3 Counseling

StageStage Research

SERVICE DESIGN AND PROTOTYPING STUDIO

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COmmitment/ attendanCe/languageStudents are required to attend class three days a week during the term of courses. No more than 25% absences can be allowed. Furthermore, the faculty strongly recommends that, to attain maximum benefit from this experience, students use their remaining time not only to study but also to actively seek out Milan’s design industry by attending some of its many events, seminars, and shows.

assessment/degreeDuring the Master’s program, faculty members will assess each student’s progress through written exercises, design revising, and presentations.

Additionally, an individual final exam will consist of the defense of the thesis the student has written during the “Service Design and Prototyping Studio” program segment. This exam, given and assessed by the Master’s faculty board, is designed to ascertain the analytic, theoretical, and practical skills the student has acquired during the Service Design degree program. Upon successful completion of the program and passage of the final exam, students will be awarded a first-level Politecnico di Milano university Master’s degree in “Service Design”.

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PrOCedureSelection is based on the assessment of the candidate’s skills, aptitude, and experience, as well as on objectives and expectations. The assessment, carried out by the Master’s board, takes into account candidates’:

- transcript and degrees;

- professional résumés;

- introductory and/or telephone interviews.

To be admitted to the program, candidates should hold a university degree in industrial design, architecture, or engineering, or have majored in a non-polytechnical field but need to integrate polytechnical training into ongoing professional experience or qualifications. A significant record of professional performance can also be given consideration. A maximum of thirty students can be enrolled in the program.

aPPliCatiOn submissiOnPrior to selection, candidates must submit the following:

- completed application form;

- up-to-date résumé (preferably with photograph);

- cover letter and motivational statement;

- any relevant reference letters.

Though no portfolio is required for consideration of the application, it may be useful to the Master’s board during assessment of the candidate’s qualifications. Candidates with portfolio are invited to submit it along with the other application materials.

tuitiOn/feesTuition charges for the Master’s program are € 12.000, including Politecnico di Milano enrollment fee, exempt from VAT under Article 10 of DPR 633/72.

finanCial aidPartial scholarships may be granted on the basis of qualifications and stated motivation.

The admissions board reserves the right not to assign said scholarships if, in its judgement, which will be considered final, no candidate has attained the required standard of qualification. The Italian government also provides a limited number of scholarship merit grants to especially qualified foreign students. Further information is available at:borseonline.esteri.it

selection anD aDMission

To participatein the selection process,

candidates must submit their application materials

to formazione@polidesign.netor fax them to

+39 02 2399 7217.

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selection anD aDMission

seleCtiOnand admissiOn

The training program relies on teaching faculty who represent Italian and international excellence in the field of service design and innovation. The faculty is made up of professors at Italian and foreign universities, assisted by the skills of designers and entrepreneurs active in the industry in Italy and abroad.

The Service Design Master’s program draws vital contributions from organizations and institutions active in various segments of the service industry. Partner companies assist in the entire training and design itinerary so as to build a program that brings the demand for new professional skills into contact with the offerings of the Master’s training.

FacUltY

enterprise partners

The Master’s board will be available to answer candidates specific questions and provide any explanations needed about the training program. For information, please contact the POLI.design Ufficio Coordinamento Formazione.

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poli.design

Ufficio Coordinamento FormazionePolitecnico di MilanoVia Durando 38/a Milano

T +39 02 2399 5864F +39 02 2399 7217formazione@polidesign.netwww.polidesign.it/servicedesign