Piia Marjut Rytilahti

The Theoretical Landscape of Service Design

This conference paper discusses the theoretical landscape of service design. It will illustrate how service design is situated in a discourse on design research and outline the theoretical background of this multidisciplinary approach from a constructive and generative research perspective. In this paper, the foundation for the conceptual service design framework is based on current debates in the field. Identification of the conceptual framework is based on an analysis of co-creating service design cases that were implemented at the Service Innovation Corner (SINCO) laboratory at the Faculty of Art and Design, University of Lapland. The conceptual framework presents five themes that are closely connected with service design: (1) design research, (2) value co-creation, (3) user experience, (4) learning, and (5) citizen engagement. Using the perspective of service design, this paper attempts to elucidate the effects of service design on development and innovation processes in private and public sectors.

Idle stripes shirt: ambient wearable display for activity tracking

We present the design and prototype of the Idle Stripes shirt, which is an aesthetic, clothing-integrated display, reflecting the wearers physical activity in an ambient manner. The design is targeted to be smart business-wear for an office worker, which creates awareness of immobility periods during typical sitting-intensive office work. Long periods of such sitting are known to be health risks. The Idle Stripes shirt promotes healthy working, encouraging the wearer to break up their office desk work with walking breaks. The design prototype is constructed of a fabric with integrated optical fibers, which are illuminated based on the sitting time detected by an app running on the wearers mobile phone.