Citizenship, Service Design and Contemporary Society: An Unholy Trinity

Prof. Dr. Gordon Hush
Sociologist, Glasgow School of Art

The talk will focus on the uneasy relationship between contemporary and emerging definitions of service design practice and citizenship, as two facets of the attempt to navigate our way towards a desirable vision of the future. The faultlines between the technological possibilities of contemporary service design and the politics of citizenship expose a problem at the heart of current conceptions of »social design« – who gets to determine behavior change, who designs Utopia? Gordon Hush is a recovering Sociologist hiding out in the world of design. He is interested in the politics of experience, and on how designers might seek to contribute to this political engagement. Gordon has headed up the Product Design department at the Glasgow School of Art since 2007 and helped steer the emergence of Design Innovation as a subject of academic study at Masters level incorporating Service Design, Citizenship, Environmental Design and, with the University of Glasgow, International Management.

http://gsadesigninnovation.com

The talk will be held in English language.