THEME
Jump to section
“Designing in the Shadows – Places and Practices of Service Design in a Polarised World”
We invite you to identify and reflect on unseen services that might reduce or aggravate polarizations. Together, we hope to strengthen service design’s philosophical grounding in the Ethics of Care, political/institutional logics (e.g. linkages to neoliberalism, and other economic and political frames). Contribute by sharing your knowledge and expertise from different sectors and disciplines around the globe. Deepen our understanding of what constitutes a service today and who it serves. Aid us in the exploration of the good, the bad, and the ugly as it relates to services.
What roles are emerging as we seek to address tensions between maintaining a quality of life that some of us – especially in the developed countries – have come to take for granted but remains elusive for many others? How may we retain a focus on balancing ecological and societal factors in the middle of a renewed global power struggle that intertwines private and public interests?
Why shadows?
We invite contributors to reflect and engage with the notion of shadows in all its possibilities and forms: i.e., as a concept, image, metaphor, practice, and beyond. Shadows are omnipresent in urban, coastal, and rural environments. We find them in nature, society, industry and business economy, and politics (shadow government!). Shadows may provide protection from harm (when it protects from UV), opening spaces for cool, rational thoughts and actions. Shadows offer cover for activities that might not go ahead in the light of the day – for good and bad.
- What lies in the shadows of services?
- What services remain unseen, undervalued and without acknowledgement?
- How may we shine a light on them, the people developing and delivering them, the people depending on and benefiting from them?
- What are the consequences, gains and losses of service design in the shadows?
- What trends in education and research can we point to that may influence the role of service design in organisational, cultural, technological, and political transformations?
- How may service designers utilise grey spaces (the in-between spaces of light and darkness) to enhance our lived experience, address climate change and economic inequality in an inclusive society?
We welcome contributions that critically and thoughtfully explore the multiple meanings and opportunities associated with designing in the shadows in a polarised world.
Conference tracks
- Shadows of Power: Governance, Democracy & Accountability
- Shadows in Translation: Culture, Knowledge & Diverse Ways of Knowing
- Algorithmic Shadows: AI, Automation & Human Dignity
- Shadows of Care: Valuing the Invisible Labour that Sustains Services
- Shadows of Place: Urban, Rural & Coastal Landscapes
- Ecological Shadows: Regeneration Beyond Sustainability
- Grey Spaces: Inclusion, Exclusion & Designing Against Polarisation
- Educating in the Shadows: Pedagogy for Complexity & Contested Values