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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Service Design

Plural perspectives and a critical contemporary agenda

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Service Design cover

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Service Design

Plural perspectives and a critical contemporary agenda

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Pre-order. Available Jan 08 2026
$249.75 RRP $277.50 Website price saving $27.75 (10%)

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Description

Drawing on a diverse array of service and design related thinkers and practitioners, this volume is a timely and critical review of the themes and intersecting disciplines that are questioning and opening up the field towards plural perspectives, showing its complexity, exposing its challenges and offering practical examples and directions.

With the growing popularity of service design both in industry and academia, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Service Design examines the discipline's core principles to develop our understanding of the context, role and impact of this practice. The editors bring together multiple voices from around the world to share experiences and perspectives on how service design interacts with global topics such as climate, social justice and racial issues, and looks at directions for the future.

Organised into five distinct sections, chapters explore a variety of key topics within the world of service design, including Plural Service & Design Cosmologies, A Critical Agenda for Service Design, Contextualising Services, Systems and Change, Developing Service Design Practices and Approaches, and Building Futures

Table of Contents


SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

SECTION 2: PLURAL SERVICES AND DESIGN COSMOLOGIES

Introduction Section 2

2.1 Service design at the crossroad of multiple knowledge forms and epistemologies
Alison Prendiville, Nipun Garodia, and Adam Drazin

2.2 Unfolding services as collective conversations: rhetoric, dialectic, and deliberative
Miso Kim and Michael Arnold Mages

2.3 Cultivating reflexivity in service design: considerations, examples, critical reflections & questions
Josina Vink, Vanessa Rodrigues, Åsa Wikberg Nilsson, and Ahmed Ansari

2.4 In the pursuit of decolonising dominant service design: three reflexive stories
Yoko Akama, Tristan Schultz, and Ricardo Sosa

2.5 Current, potential and future trajectories for interdisciplinarity across service and design Research
Stefan Holmlid, Martina Caic, Anna Seravalli, and Elina Jaakkola

SECTION 3: A CRITICAL AGENDA FOR SERVICE DESIGN

Introduction Section 3

3.1 Justice in designing services
Lesley-Ann Noel, Gina Fernandes, and Robert B. Whiteside

3.2 Worker-centred service design: countering the invisibility of workers
Lara Penin and Rashid Owoyele

3.3 The politics of participation in service design: preparation, emergence, and refusals
Shana Agid, Myriam D. Diatta, and Jakob Trischler

3.4 The case for feminist service design
Daniella Jenkins (interview with Lara Penin)

3.5 Embracing the unknown: service design approaches to address uncertainty
Aguinaldo dos Santos, Ricardo Martins, Mari Suhoeimo, and Jaewoo Joo

SECTION 4: CONTEXTUALISING SERVICES, SYSTEMS AND CHANGE

Introduction Section 4

4.1. Making sense of design for business: towards an umbrella paradigm moving service design and its allied fields forward
Ingo Oswald Karpen and Ileana Stigliani

4.2 A systemic perspective on service design
Daniela Sangiorgi, Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, Lia Patricio, and Jennie Winhall

4.3 Research dialogues for proximity and trust when working with government
Sabine Junginger and Michael Kost

4.4 Service design and social change
Thomas Markussen, Daniela Selloni, and Joyce Yee

4.5 The music that breaks the gramophone: opening service design education to perspectives beyond the present paradigm
A conversation among Nicola Morelli, Amalia de Götzen, and Luca Simeone with Grazia Concilio, Francesca Cognetti, and Ni Minqing

SECTION 5: DEVELOPING SERVICE DESIGN PRACTICES AND APPROACHES

Introduction Section 5

5.1 Collective embodiment in service interfaces
Frederick M. C. van Amstel and Fernando Secomandi

5.2 Design facilitation: navigating complex and asymmetrical contexts
Manuela Aguirre Ulloa, Florencia Adriasola, Gianncarlo Duran, and Andrés Ortega

5.3 Queering service design: toward a truly human-centered design orientation
Sloan Leo Cowan with Mari Nakano

5.4 Dialogical empathy in services: guidelines and principles between art and design
Carla Cipolla, Alice Devecchi, and Luis Alt

5.5 Service design ethnography: experiences from practice-based research
Juan Sanin and Melisa Duque

5.6 Journeys of digital transformation: a reflection on stories of organisational change and the role of service designers
Roberta Tassi and Serena Talento

5.7 Service design narratives
John A. Bruce, Francesca Piredda, and Janna DeVylder


SECTION 6: BUILDING FUTURES

Introduction Section 6

6.1 Speculative services: critical technology literacy and the future of service design
Elizaveta (Lee) Kravchenko and Laura Forlano

6.2 More-than-human service design
Marc Brightman, Francesco Cara, and Ralitsa Diana Debrah

6.3 A Political dialogue about government service design politics
Cameron Tonkinwise and Lucy Kimbell

6.4 Designing services for de-humanising futures
Stefana Broadbent

6.5 Commoning for a regenerative world: realizing new directions for service design
Julia Schaeper and Glenn Robert

Product details

Published Jan 08 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 464
ISBN 9781350330283
Imprint Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Illustrations 63 B&W illus, 19 tables
Dimensions 244 x 169 mm
Series Bloomsbury Visual Arts Handbooks
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Lara Penin

Lara Penin is Associate Professor of Transdiscipli…

Anthology Editor

Alison Prendiville

Alison Prendiville is Senior Researcher for the De…

Anthology Editor

Daniela Sangiorgi

Daniela Sangiorgi was one of the first scholars wo…

Environment: Staging