It’s an exciting year for Service Design Canada, a chapter of the Service Design Network. They’ve won the bid for hosting the 2019 Service Design Global Conference! The 12th edition of the Service Design Global Conference, which will take place at the Evergreen Brick Works from October 10 to 11, will explore how service design builds bridges to design and deliver a smarter, happier future—for everyone.

Bridgeable Founder Chris Ferguson, along with Bridgeable’s Chad Story and Marie-Eve Bélanger, are founding board members of Service Design Canada and core members of the conference’s organizing committee. As local representatives for the global conference, they are responsible for shaping the agenda and programs and leading efforts on the ground. 

Bridgeable’s involvement doesn’t end there. Bridgers Josh Greenhut, Hudson Pridham, Max Silverbrook, and Hitomi Yokota will be delivering workshops and giving talks.

Josh Greenhut

Josh will be delivering a talk titled Designing for Imperfect Systems. As service designers, it can be tempting to believe that if we’ve properly co-created and validated a solution, it will perform beautifully, just like we planned. But the reality is that when imperfect human beings collide with imperfect conditions, even the most well-designed system can fail. Using examples from a broad range of industries, this talk looks at how imperfect systems function and gives designers practical tools so they can actively design for them.

Hudson Pridham and Max Silverbrook

Hudson and Max will be delivering a workshop titled Chatting Chatbots: Bringing Chatbots to Life. Chatbots are playing an increasingly important role in delivering standout experiences that deepen customer relationships. Building successful chatbots requires more than technical expertise. To create engaging and valued chatbots, we must understand customer needs, behaviours, and service interactions, while leveraging best practices in conversation design. In this workshop, participants will apply service design techniques to design, build, and test interactive chatbot prototypes.

Hitomi Yokota

Hitomi will be delivering a workshop titled Inclusive Co-Design: Making Co-Design Processes Inclusive to People with Language Barriers. This workshop is for designers and researchers who practice co-design and aim to be more inclusive of diverse cultural groups. Too often, we design with and for the majority of the community and adapt outcomes to fit the needs of the minority. The Inclusive Co-design Toolkit was developed with 30 stakeholders to provide best practices in co-designing with language minorities. By attending the workshop, you will gain hands-on experience applying inclusive principles from the toolkit.

We are all excited for what’s in store and looking forward to a fantastic event! Get your tickets today!