The Master of Design (Smart Service Design) (SSD) is an interdisciplinary specialism focusing on designing at the intersection of business, technology and human ingenuity to create meaningful service interventions for broader societal and business challenges. This specialism expands the scope of design beyond the current commercialised and compartmentalised professional practices by orienting it towards the "socio-technical dimension of design" with a critical, systemic and human-centred perspective within the context of service.
The specialism is designed to nurture students and develop their theoretical and practical knowledge of service design. SSD fosters the extension of students' abilities through a deep understanding of the technological, commercial, societal and organisational contexts, presenting the transformation of design opportunities into new and sustainable service experiences.
Aims
The aims of this specialism are:
To deepen the understanding of end-to-end service journeys and design service ecosystems across multiple services;
To identify how the centrality of users' needs and interests of different groups of stakeholders in the human-centred design process is complemented in business and organisation in the broader service industry, and apply the same in practice;
To develop and apply service design to a range of business, societal and environmental challenges through studios, collaboration with stakeholders, partners and experts across multiple disciplines, and using service design at a strategic, operational and systems level; and
To accelerate new service design practices and ways of systems thinking to advance skill sets and practices for service innovation.
Objectives
PolyU is the first university in Hong Kong that offers both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in service design education in response to the rapidly increasing global demands for service. The focus of Smart Service Design is beyond the scope of user experience design, information design, product design, or any other single output of design application; rather, it focuses on a broad design spectrum that integrates design, business, technology and human needs to create service solutions of tomorrow and bring new value to the service industry and society at large.
Through advanced service design methodologies, SSD offers a unique interdisciplinary educational environment that meets diverse learning needs and provides students with opportunities to reshape their own design practices. This specialism offers students the to work and involve themselves in the creation of transformations and evaluations of service products and content across both digital and offline channels through lectures, studio learning, workshops and their industry research projects.
Our graduates will be equipped with the necessary professional skills to meet the demands of careers in the service industry. They will play different roles not only in conventional design-related professions but also in management and strategy in various service sectors, such as consumer electronics, mobility, healthcare, tourism and hospitality, finance, public service and so on.