Course content

This course provides fundamental knowledge in service design frameworks and human-centered design principles, emphasizing their application and adaptation to service innovation in both public and private sectors. Theoretical learning is integrated with practical project work, linked to specific cases and business challenges presented by course participants, ensuring relevance to their professional contexts. This approach allows participants to apply their learning directly to their work, facilitating immediate and practical benefits for their organizations.

The course emphasizes the importance of digital transformation, co-creation, change management, and stakeholder involvement. It highlights the opportunities presented by technological advancements and digitization for the future of services. Additionally, the course integrates the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #9, focusing on the sustainable development of services to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.

The course is conducted in English. If necessary, the project report can be written in Norwegian in consultation with the course instructor.

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

• Understand the strategic overview of services and their connected value chains and stakeholders.
• Identify key principles of human-centered, co-creative, holistic, visual, tested in service design.
• Visualize and actively participate in a service design process.
• Have knowledge of prerequisites for successful change processes (management, anchoring, decision-making basis, organization, creativity) which ultimately benefit the end user, service provider, and society.
• Understand how technology and digitization can create new and better services.

Skills:

• Have training in the application of design principles and the use of various methods for service design and human centered design principles .
• Formulate a problem and plan a service design process.
• Document, interpret, and analyze user insight data.
• Include relevant stakeholders and meet their wishes and needs in the design process, developing solutions for improved or new services.
• Use the service design methodology in their business.

General Qualifications:

• Have practical experience with service design methods

Learning methods and activities

Course pedagogy is highly interactive project based learning, peer learning and hands on experience with real life problem solving. The course will require participants to bring a problem case from the industry-office that they are currently involved with or are interested in working with. At the start of the module, these cases will be shared with all the participants and based on interest, and groups of 2 or 3 participants will be formed. This case will be the main problem that all course learnings will be applied and later evaluated upon during the course.

All teaching will be carried out digitally via Zoom.

There will be lecturers from academia and industry collaborating in delivering this course. The course consists of 2 modules of 2 days each (09.00-16.00), teaching, along with midterm presentation, 2 personalized mentoring sessions (30 minutes for each team) and a final exam presentation

Work with pre project assignment 15 hours

Module 1, 15 hours

Online teaching between session 1 and 2 40 hrs

Mentoring 1- personalised supervision with teacher on project

Mid term presentation

Module 2, Trondheim 15 hours

Work with project report before submission: 40 hrs

Mentoring 2 -personalised supervision with teacher on project

Final presentation

Emnet tilbys internasjonale studenter og undervises derfor på engelsk.

This course is offered to international students, language of instruction i English. If required, the project report can be written in Norwegian in consult with the course teacher.

Compulsory assignments

• Participation workshop 1+2
• Participation online courses 1+2

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

The primary target group is:

• managers
• project managers
• advisers
• innovator leaders
• digital transformation leaders

The course content will relate to all sectors and disciplines that work with digitization processes in connection with service development and service innovation.

The secondary target group is:

• project staff
• developers
• designers
• other participants in service development projects

Required previous knowledge

The admission requirement is twofold:

1. Completed degree of 180 credits.
2. Minimum two years relevant work experience.

If you don't have a bachelor's degree or equivalent completed education of at least 180 credits, you can request a prior learning assessment of your admission basis.Working conditions must be documented with a certificate from the employer describing the type of job, work tasks, job percentage and duration.

You must document education and work experience within the application deadline in order to have your application processed.

• Read more about documentation requirements (In Norwegian)
• Read more about admission and current ranking rules (In Norwegian)

Course materials

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World (Stickdorn, et al, 2018).

Articles and video material will be made available at study start.