ServDes.

The Nordic Conference on Service Design and Service Innovation, ServDes, is the premier research conference within service design and service innovation. Submitted contributions are subject to a double-blind peer-review process. Accepted contributions will be published electronically and in the conference proceedings.

NOTE! Deadline has been extended to July 2nd. Submissions should be full length according to your chosen submission type.

Important dates:

July 2 (was June 19) 2010: Submission deadline for all contibutions
- full and short papers
- cases
- workshops
Mid October:  Notifcation of acceptance with suggestions for revision
Mid November:  Final paper submission
1 – 3 December: Conference in Linköping

There is a research paper template for full papers (max 10 pages) and short papers (max 5 pages). For workshop suggestions and cases we have a 2 page max template. Both templates are available here.

Call for contribution:

Service design as a field has established itself as a strong discipline, through efforts in practice and academia. However, publications have mainly focused on establishing service design. There is a growing need for original research on service design. The ServDes conference is an answer to this call. The first Nordic Service Design and Service Innovation Conference offered a venue for investigating the legacy from other design disciplines as well as opening up towards other fields.

The topic for this year’s conference is ExChanging Knowledge. ServDes invites contributions from researchers and practitioners that wish to contribute to the development of a knowledge base on service design, and openly discuss challenges of the field. Changing Knowledge is about investigating the fundamentals in service design and challenging the knowledge inherited from the disciplines which service design has grown out of. Exchanging Knowledge refers both to integrating knowledge from other fields and the ongoing conversation between conference participants with their various roles; consultants, students, in-house, clients and academics. The scientific programme will be composed of papers that have been peer-reviewed in a double-blind review process.

In line with the conference theme ExChanging Knowledge sessions will be held according to general themes, rather than presenters’ backgrounds. Along the lines of the theme we will also invite a wide range of contributions:
- full length research papers (max 10 pages)
- workshop suggestions
- shorter research papers (max 5 pages)
- focused case descriptions (2 page abstracts)

Within overall trends of research, challenges such as the prototyping of services, identifying sound theoretical foundations for service design research and developing methods and tools all aim at changing the knowledge we teach new students and our understanding of service design. Exchanging knowledge with other relevant areas such as service management, anthropology, computer-mediated communication, activity theory and cognitive science, aims at improving the everyday practice of service designers. The conference invites contributions on, e.g., the following themes:
- the business of service design
- politics and design of services
- user involvement
- design in health-care and public services
- service design in for-profit organizations
- theoretical foundations
- the processes of service design
- rigor and relevance of research methods
- novel design tools and techniques
- service design across cultures
- design and service-dominant logic

Please use the provided templates for your submission. Deadline for all paper contributions is July 2 2010. Templates are available on the submission templates page.  The submission system is placed externally. If you have any questions regarding submitting a contribution, please contact info [at] servdes DOT org.