Transitioning From University to Work in Service Design: Insights From the Product-Service System Design Tour Format Development

The last decades have been of significant growth for the Service Design discipline. For supporting students in understanding the multifaceted profile of the Service Designer, academia needs to reflect on how this evolution affects the educational setting as Service Design methods are now applied in different contexts to face complex societal and business challenges. This paper explores how university-industry collaboration in extracurricular activities might support students in understanding the role of the Service Designer in practice. An extracurricular activity in the format of a digital event—the PSSD Tour—addresses this inquiry by involving companies and students in conversations to explore the different applications of Service Design methods in industry projects. After three co-design sessions with stakeholders trigger the development of the PSSD Tour format, three iterative tour tests with companies help experiment and evolve the format.