Service design in open production, distribution and organisation as a discipline facilitating democratic critique?

Service Design, as its name suggests, is mostly concerned with motivations for building new services and systems. Its driving factors are often the desire to improve the human experience of these systems and to create leaner processes. In this paper, we point to the key qualities of service design and how complements from other disciplines may strengthen its analytical components, allowing a critical understanding of complex technological systems. The first part of the paper aims to describe this general scenario of transformation. The second part is based on an initial literature review, mapping existing contributions that talk about the role of service design in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The final aim of this part is to find emerging trends in service design, by analysing and comparing common and/or different disciplinary points of view. These new trends could help discern possible new challenges for service design.