Global Service Design Jam Oslo

Pic: Alex Asensi

Manuela Aguirre is an emergent designer, ex student [in Chile] and good friend finishing her Masters in System-Service Oriented Design in The School of Architecture and Design in Oslo [AHO], Norway. Manuela has been tightly working in “The Policy Lab” and experiencing the role of design at the systems level. She recently attended the “Global Service Jam” in Oslo. Here is what she tells us:

“On Friday 24th of February we got together in the Pop-up hub in Oslo (the first virtual co-working space: POPUP HUB OSLO . With some beers and pizza we met the Oslo participants at the second Global Service Jam.  At 7 o’clock we all gathered together towards the big screen to get the task from the central jam-office in Germany where they announced the global theme for this event: Hidden Treasures.

Check out the opening theme for this year:

From that minute

Give and take, a service designed social economy

Pic: ccxtina on Flickr

Christina Worsing is more than a social activist. A designer by formation, which is how I happen to know her, Christina has pulled forward this amazing initiative that is called “Give and Take”. Willing to revert object’s planned obsolescence [just a bad design strategy], they provide the service connection to recirculate “pre-loved” resources by setting the stage for “Ethical Economies” to happen. Based on the idea of formalizing “cambalaches” [how this is called in Chile] or swaps… Her initiative has created a whole rethinking of the service deployment that a social re distributed economy like this would have. This service strategy has been defined using the design process in creating touch points, diagramming system’s flow and conducting front-end research to understand all the individuals involved.
Pic: ccxtina on Flickr

So what is Give and Take?
“Give-and-Take is a community-based project that develops services, activities and events to circulate pre-loved clothing throughout the local area. Along the way we share ideas and thoughts on how to re-use, repurpose and rethink

AIGA Design/Education conference: Yay! the content is up

The AIGA conference on education and design just ended. Hosted by NC State’s Graphic Design program, it became to be the start point for a serious redefinition of the Designer’s practice. Some of the speakers and participants included: John Thackara [Doors of Perception, Social Economies and Sustainability], Dori Tunstall [Swinburne University, Design Anthropologist], Rick Robinson [E-Lab, Sapient, Continuum- Collaboration], Sharon Poggenpohl [Ex IIT, Hong Kong Poytechnic, DEsign Integrations and a Design Research culture from scratch], Shelley Evenson [Ex Carnegie Mellon, now Microsoft Social - Service Design], David Small [MIT Media Lab, now Small Design Firm],

Is design one of the ways to avoid “Dutch Disease” in Latin America?

Picture 01: ‘The Economist’ Sept 2010

In a special report about Latin America, due to a lot of the countries celebrating 200 years of independence [the so beloved BICENTENARIO] “The Economist” dedicates a whole issue to articles that refer to issues regarding political and economical background. Even though, as we’ve stated in previous posts, “you can’t put all Latin American Countries” in a bag, as Hans Rosling would point out; there are some issues that can be considered a general trend. Latin America is now enjoying good prices on their commodities. Could we suffer the “Dutch Disease” ? For some, the Dutch Disease, can be a well-known term. Yet it is not mentioned or taught in an ordinary design school. The ‘Dutch Disease, ‘a term coined by this newspaper in 1977 to describe the impact of a North Sea gas bonanza on the economy of the Netherlands. This malady involves commodity exports driving up the value of the currency, making other part of the economy less competitive, leading to current-account deficit and even greater dependence on commodities. This matters because all the more because mining and hydrocarbons are capital-intensive businesses, generating relatively few jobs’ [The Economist, "It's only Natural", 2010] The article indicates that commodities are not enough to make flourishing economies sustainable.

Picture 02: Service design project for SCL Airport@Procorp [C.Miranda, N.Cristi]

SERVICE DESIGN: THE NEXT BIG THING FOR LATIN AMERICA
Even though the article puts upfront some policies taken by some countries like Chile [Fundación Chile & Corfo] and Brazil which are bringing some manufacturing an other innovations in the goods exportation in order to diversify the use of the commodities; there is still a fear to this kind of scenario: commodities being a “curse”. They pose the question: ‘How do you go from copper to computers?“. Is that the question we should ask? How to get to be an industrialized country? Maybe the model that we [Latin Americans] should follow is that of being “Service leaders”. And not just in delivering the service of “Call Centers”, as the India Model shows [“The World is Flat”, (2005) Thomas L.Friedman]; but delivering other kind of service models that can fulfill the region’s needs [who knows better than natives about their own culture?], that meaning private and public services; and the Northern Hemisphere’s needs at better rates.

Service Design can be the next big thing for Latin America. IDEO and Adaptive Path are