This past few months I have been helping to organise the service jam in Dundee, which is running this weekend (07.03.14-09.03.14). A service jam is a global event, taking place in over 100 different location worldwide, from LA to Hiroshima which aims to come up with new ideas to design public services.
One of my tasks was to produce screen printed t-shirts for the participants (jammers) to buy, which you can see in the photos below.
But what actually is a service jam? This is something I had to explain to the STV camera when they came to find out what was going on. It was really funny doing the filming, we had to pretend we were at the jam so that people could get a feel of what goes on. We were really just having a laugh and messing around.
So, it’s a 48 hour event which encourages it’s participants to think in new and different ways, learning new skills and unfamiliar techniques. Service design, which is what the whole weekend is centered on, is a relatively new practice. It’s all about designing the experience of the consumer, as opposed to a solid object. This could be something like designing a better commute or a better way to do your weekly shop. So, over the course of the weekend all of our Jammers will be coming up with their own working prototypes of a service. The first step was finding out what the secret theme is, which each jam finds out on the first night. And here it is;
The theme is open to interpretation and after a brainstorming session different topics are decided on. A human bar graph, seen below, allows people to decide which is the topic for them and our teams are created! We ended up with four different themes; construction and building, growth and community and play.
Some further team work is done, more brainstorming and to round the night off some one minute presentations about what each group intends to do. Then off to the pub, of course, for some chatting and a few drinks. There is a great mix of people jamming this weekend, both under and postgraduate students as well as professionals, who have no experience of design. It’s sure to be fun filled!
Marigold 