Thinking
Where the practice thinks out loud: journals and research, practitioner writing, podcasts and newsletters worth subscribing to.
Refine
15 resources · Research
A meta-analysis in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes of how peaks, endings and duration relate to the way people evaluate experiences in retrospect.
A 2021 paper proposing a power literacy framework for service designers, covering privilege, access, goals, roles and rules. Open access copy from TU Delft.
An Ethics and Information Technology article examining dark patterns through four dimensions of autonomy: agency, freedom of choice, control and independence.
A Design Management Academy 2017 paper exploring cultural analysis and semiotics as ways to understand expectations, identity and symbolic meaning in services.
A CHI 2026 paper mapping dark patterns to deception, manipulation and the distortion or impairment of choice, and identifying the design factors involved.
An edited academic collection on the theory and future of designing for services, bringing together researchers from the field's main university groups.
A Design and Culture article reviewing the concept of autonomy and exploring its use in service design through case studies of services for older people.
A Journal of Business Research article examining how first, peak and final impressions, and the delay before recall, relate to overall evaluations of a service, using hotel stays.
A ServDes 2020 paper drawing together four different views of culture in service design and arguing for attention to cultural plurality rather than a single fixed understanding.
A ServDes 2025 paper introducing a project-centred template for examining how social, political and ecological forces enable or constrain design work. A proposed tool whose evaluation is ongoing.
A chapter in Doing Good Qualitative Research examining how power in the researcher and participant relationship shapes what is learned, and proposing a power-conscious approach.
The Service Design and Innovation conference, the main academic gathering for service design research, held every two years with open proceedings.
A ServDes 2018 paper and case study exploring stakeholder mapping as a way to talk about roles and the distribution of power in public service design.
Daniela Sangiorgi's widely cited 2011 paper in the International Journal of Design on service design as a driver of organisational and social change.
A journal article examining the contextual and organisational factors that limit service designers' ability to address power dynamics in their work.