Organisations as material

As a service designer you operate with and within change. In this chapter we consider what it is that changes when service design is introduced into an organisation. We argue that it is not only the product that is transformed, but also the organisation itself. Our definition of material is ‘that which is being changed’and in this case, it is the organisation.
Empirically, we draw on the first author’s experiences as design researcher in an organisation and combine the experiences with insights from nine semi-structured interviews with professional designers (n= 5) and managers (n= 4). The aim of the interviews was to understand the involvement of a professional designer and the applied design methods in five information technology development projects. At project start the company was new to working with design methods.