For me one of the stand out presentations at the Experience Service Design Conference in Kuopio Finland I attended last week, was that by Renato Troncon from Laboratorio di Aesthetics in Practice and Community Design. Renato, a philospher by background stated his belief that:

“Philosophy is augmented by design, design is augmented by philosophy”

What this means can perhaps be better understood by Renato’s note that,

“Philosophy is concerned with meaning…to be descriptive is not enough…you have to be concerned with values”

Thus, by this definition design without a clearly defined philosophy has no value, philosophy without a physical or tangible outcome, in other words – a design, is meaningless.

I hope you are still with me, but to me this seems to neatly summarise the wider discussions and presentations that took place not only at the whole Kuopio conference but also at Service Design Thinks a week past Thursday in London. The need to be able to express your ‘design thinking’ , to quote Renato again, in terms of “a truth in which users can all participate”. The discussion of truth takes us to the issue of how users percieve whether or not a product or service is ‘authentic’ or not.

The issue of ‘Authenticity’ has been widely discussed in relation to design, largely off the back of the book of the same name and the Experience Economy books by Gilmore and Pine.

But why is this valuable to designers and why did such discussions, long at the heart of aesthetics and philosophy, find their way to a service design conference in Finland? Largely, I believe because this summarises the core benefits of Service Design and it’s contribution to value generation. It was an inspired decision to invite Renato as a philospher and aesthetician to a conference on the design of ‘intangible’ services. For as it was concurred at Service Design Thinks and as I have learned from my own experience this year attempting to market the profession of Ergonomics. A clearly defined philosophy is central to human ability to engage with your product, service or professional discipline.

Renato proceeded to reference the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader, in saying that like screenplay writers, service designers should be concerned in creating ‘authentic stories and experiences’ by breaking down their creative proposition into:

• A Theme or Philosophy (analogous to the ‘Design Intent’ or ‘Service Propostion’)
• A Metaphor (analogous to the Service Touchpoints, or the physical manifestation of that proposition)
• A Story (the link between the Service Touchpoints. For as Jeff Howard, Nico Morelli and Kalle Buschmann have helped point out recently, service occurs between, not in it’s touchpoints).

I think this and Renato’s thoughts more generally, provide a hugely valuable means of breaking down ‘the aesthetic’ of a design proposition and understanding how we as users identify the authenticity of an experience or service. If we perceive any inconsistency in how a service appears, or if we perceive an inconsistency between the touchpoints of a service and the service itself, we render the service design inauthentic and we lose faith in it. This impacts on our ability as users to engage with the service and therefore impacts on the value it generates both for it’s designers and/or for the bottom line of company who provide it.

I think this also demonstrates, on a theoretical level anyway, the benefits of service design over conventional ‘style led design’ or ‘industrial design’. Perhaps such more established forms of design have a philosphy and perhaps even succeed in representing that philosophy or design intent, but what they lack is the story or narrative that will engage users with them.

Such narratives and philosphies are of course imperative in engaging users in co-creation and collaborative design or improvement of products and services.

For the more pragmatic amongst us, this might all seem redundant intellectual gymnastics. However, I personally find Renato’s thoughts very valuable as a tool for identifying product or service propositions that seem inconsistent with their design philosophy or surroundings. It is in such examples that many opportunities for Service Design lie as we as an emerging disicipline proceed to define our own professional and personal associations and philosophies.

What do you think, is there a role for philosophers and philosophy in Design?