From Experience to Co‑Creation: How Service Design Is Transforming Public Services

On September 2, 2025, the U Enjoy Club “Design’s New Frontier: From Experience to Co‑Creation” sharing session concluded. Service designer Lin Ziwei (Zoey) combined theory and practice to deliver an in‑depth talk, systematically outlining the evolution of service design, its core methods, and practical applications in public services.

Lin reviewed key milestones: 1982 G. Lynn Shostack first introduced the concept and the service blueprint; 1991 service design entered education, with IDEO promoting design‑thinking integration; after 2000 numerous companies and labs were founded, and in 2019 China incorporated it as a priority area, entering a standardization phase.

Regarding core methods, she emphasized the synergy of tools and perspectives: personas, user maps and other visualizations locate pain points; a business perspective uncovers new opportunities, such as a company leveraging K12 assets for cross‑domain services; a user‑insight perspective deepens needs, exemplified by a Guizhou hospital optimizing patient flow to boost satisfaction; a design perspective coordinates the whole to prevent fragmented processes.

On public‑service design, she noted that local governments must use service design to address aging and other challenges; over 100 labs worldwide practice this, e.g., the UK Behavioural Insights Team and Denmark’s Mindlab, and designers should shift from one‑way supply to multi‑stakeholder co‑creation.

Finally, she said the future of service design requires interdisciplinary integration: ethnography uncovers deep needs; speculative design explores long‑term challenges, offering directions to tackle issues such as climate change.