Course summary

On BA (Hons) Service Design, you’ll explore a future-making practice through interdisciplinary approaches, building a strong foundation in core design principles to understand the effect of design on both the natural and built world, and on individuals, communities and society. As a discipline, service design involves planning and organising people to design infrastructure, communication and material components in ways that aim to improve the quality of a service, along with the interaction between a service provider and its users. This course will enable you to consider systems, actions and infrastructures within the context of an emerging practice, positioning you at the forefront of new developments that are increasingly being adopted across public and private sectors. What to expect

• Learning by making: With opportunities to explore both physical and digital making, you’ll learn how to develop and communicate your ideas to a wide range of audiences through different types of media. You’ll be taught using research-through-design methodologies which emphasise playfulness and prototyping, which will help you to communicate your design process and your final outcomes.

• Human-centred approach: You’ll develop a grounding in qualitative, collaborative and design-led research methods to co-design services in ways that will enable you to step outside your existing knowledge and experience while approaching design from multiple perspectives.

• Social purpose: Throughout the course, you’ll design not only for but with marginalised communities by identifying their needs and addressing inequalities, and by working on briefs that focus on providing social or ecological value.

• Collaborative focus: You’ll learn how to navigate group roles and collaborate effectively within both a course and a discipline underpinned by teamwork.