Paper No.79: Current States: mapping relational geographies in service design

Paper No.79

Current States: mapping relational geographies in service design
Sasha Abram, Sabina Popin, Bianca Mediati

Abstracta
As Service Design navigates unchartered territory, maps of all kinds are becoming essential tools for the design process. Maps document the service offering in its current form, celebrating what works and identify challenges. They leverage the agency of visualisation and storytelling to educate, engage and guide internal and external stakeholders along the journey to service innovation. Maps as artefacts are becoming a disruptor for organisations that are accustomed to traditional ways of communicating and allow the voice of the customer to sing in the creation of future strategy and opportunities. Mapping, as a process, is an ideal way to foster co-design and collaboration across hierarchies and institutional sectors. In this way, it operates as a type of ontological design – designing back on the organisation that creates it.