Conducted by Daniela Selloni, the ongoing module is about user participation in the service process, from co-design to co-production, to co-governance. The objective of the course is to train students in co-design methods and tools: in fact, programming and managing the involvement of users and stakeholders in the design process is considered nowadays a key-competence for service designers. The last decade has seen the emergence of a great number of activities labeled as “co-design projects”, ranging over a variety of services in different fields, encompassing private, public, and third sectors. The notion of co-design is precisely based on the idea that people having different voices should collaborate within a design process: this is even more important in complex and systemic projects as services are.
The course will provide the basics of co-design together with a series of case studies to complement the theoretical part. Students will then experiment with co-design activities, adopting a learning-by-doing approach, by ideating, developing, and actually running two different co-design sessions, one in a digital mode and one in an in-presence mode. In the end, students will be able to navigate within the co-design world, deepening approaches, methods, and tools, and handle the different levels of user participation in the service process. As service designers, it’s crucial to know how to ideate, organize, facilitate, guide, and evaluate co-design activities.
