Je zou veronderstellen dat de vraag; Wat is design? door iedereen beantwoord zou kunnen worden. Van de 40 studenten was er één student met één antwoord. ‘Design is een ontworpen product. Een design lamp, of design stoel.‘ Ik ben blij dat er überhaupt een reactie uit de zaal kwam. Maar toch is het gek dat, wanneer je gekozen hebt voor een studie in design, je hier geen helder beeld van hebt.

Maar eerlijkheid gebied mij te erkennen dat er tijdens mijn studie eigenlijk nooit gediscussieerd is over wat design nu eigenlijk is. In de wandelgangen spraken wij wel veel over het verschil tussen ontwerpen en vormgeven.

Design Council geeft een helder antwoord op de vraag.

De gastles ging natuurlijk over service design. Dat je ook kunt ontwerpen waarbij het resultaat geen product is was volgens mij 2 bruggen te ver.

Het antwoord op: Wat is service design volgt volgende week. To be continued…

The symposium featured 3 keynote speakers that all had a strong link between their business and creativity. One of the speakers was Walter Amerika who is trying to setup a bank sofa aimed at the needs of the creative industry. The other speaker was Ruud Hendriks, a highly successful dutch media entrepreneur who is the living example that you need to take risks in order to succeed.
Besides the speakers there were workshops on “Crossmedia”, “Marketing 2.0″ and “Service Design”.

31Volts co-organized the Service Design workshop in which we explained our 3 day Service Design project we did a week earlier. During the workshop we used our audience to actually prototype an experience we designed. This was a welcome distraction from all the theory and frankly it was just also fun to do.

The day ended with the presentation by James -“I’m a Service Designer”- Samperi from our friends at Engine. I think James did a great job. Most of the people in the audience had probably never heard of Service Design before. James managed to really bring this to live by using vivid examples of actual Service Design projects at Engine. Presenting a practical definition of “services” and “design” definitely helped to explain the work of a Service Designer. Also the power of big brands was shown again. The examples James used were for some of Engine’s established clients. That big companies take Service Design seriously and see the business potential gives this field the credibility is needs to grow. I was even approached after the event by people saying that they were really impressed by the projects done in the UK and were curious what the current state in the Netherlands is.
It would have been great if the presentation would come online but I haven’t found it yet *hint.

It was a good day for the PR department of 31Volts as we were featured in the magazine “echt” (authentic) that was handed out during the event. And were stalked all day by a TV crew that was making a coverage the symposium and used us as their social object. The positive attention Service Design got (big thanks to James) doesn’t hurt us either.

I think all in all around +/-250 people attended the symposium, ranging from students to innovation-managers. It’s interesting to see what the next step will be by the Hogeschool Utrecht. Organizing such an event is hard work but it’s even harder to create a sustainable “creativity means business” culture.