RCA Service Design

Just 20 days to go!

Service Design students are getting ready to showcase their EXPO, highlighting original concepts, innovative problem-solving, and bold ideas that envision the future of design.

Join us to explore exceptional Service Design projects from our 2026 cohort, alongside lightning talks & panel discussions exploring Service Design at a Crossroads: What comes next for Service Design? The event serves as both a celebration of our graduating cohort’s achievements and a vital space for reflection on where Service Design practice is headed.

Opening Times:
Friday 17th July, 12 - 8pm, Design Bar + Gorvy Theater
Saturday 18th July, 12 - 6pm, Design Bar
Sunday 19th July, 12 - 6pm, Design Bar

Events:
Lightning Talks + Panel Discussions

RCA Battersea
Riverside, 1 Hester Rd,
London SW11 4AY

If you’d like to attend the Lightning Talks and Panel Discussion on Friday, then please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rca-2026-service-design-show-tickets-1992064818497?aff=oddtdtcreator

Design Comes with Responsibility.

In our 5th Seminar, our cohort explored the transformative
power of Social Innovation and the designer’s role in fostering resilient, sustainable communities.

With a career spanning over four decades, from Materials and Strategic Design to Service Design, Ezio Manzini shared insights on how design can act as a major driver for sustainable change through his flagship initiative, “Design for City Making.”

Speaker Lineup
🔵 Ezio Manzini, Distinguished Professor on Design for Social Innovation at ELISAVA, Founder of the DESIS Network, and Author of Design, When Everybody Designs.

School of Design EXPO | Service Design MA 2026

Join us to explore exceptional service design projects from our 2026 cohort, alongside lightning talks & panel discussions exploring Service Design at a Crossroads: What comes next for Service Design?
The event serves as both a celebration of our graduating cohort’s achievements and a vital space for reflection on where service design practice is headed.

Opening Times:
Friday 17 July 12—8pm Design Bar + Gorvy Theater
Saturday 18 July 12—6pm Design Bar

Events:
Lightning Talks + Panel Discussions

RCA Battersea
Riverside, 1 Hester Rd,
London SW11 4AY

While the overall event is open to everyone, the lightning talks and panel discussion in the Gorvy Theatre on 17 July require registration. Please save your spot via the link in our bio.

In our 2nd term, we ran a series of seminars that explore and reflect on the urgent contemporary challenges that service designers can address and the strengths and limitations of service design approaches in addressing these challenges.

In our 4th seminar: What obligations and possibilities does the environment crisis bring to Service Design’, our cohort tackled the urgent role of service design in responding to the environmental crisis and the breaching of our planetary boundaries.
We explored how our practice can shift from technocentric fixes to deep mindset changes, learning from regenerative and transition design to better address climate change and species loss. The session challenged us to adapt our traditional tools to work at different systemic scales, focusing on how service design can lead to genuine planetary transformation.

Speaker Lineup
● Sanjay Khanna, Chief Futurist at SK Futures Inc.
● Dr. Oli Pattenden, Global Research and Insight Director at The Sustainability Studio
(Accenture Song)
● Josie Warden, Former Head of Regenerative Design at the Royal Society of Arts
● Dr. Susan Evans, Founder of Melee, Design for Transformation
● Andrew Simms, Co-director of the New Weather Institute

Royal College of Art

Learning from Ella and Bethan brought the professional world directly into our studio. As leaders at Innovation Unit, they shared high-stakes “tricks of the trade”, from managing challenging group dynamics to mitigating risks in real-time.
These are essential skills as our cohort embarks on their Individual Research Projects (IRP). 💡’

This session was as practical as it was inspiring. The “workshop thinking sheets” provided by our alumni have already become a vital asset for the cohort.

Kudos to shared knowledge!

As service design becomes increasingly integrated into public sector contexts, fundamental questions emerge about how design can shape not only service delivery but also policy development and public innovation.

This seminar explores that intersection, examining the gap between policy intent and lived experience, and how design methodologies can help bridge it.

We have brought together four speakers offering complementary perspectives:

🔵 Kenjiro Taniguchi, RCA Service Design alumnus and Policy Analyst at the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, sharing an international view on how governments are adopting
design in policy-making.

🔵 Alejandra Diaz, Head of Service & Policy Design at Camden Council, grounding the conversation in the realities of embedding design within local government.

🔵 Umesh Pandya, Co-founder of Wayfindr and Social Innovation Practitioner at Nesta, exploring how design-led entrepreneurship creates public value beyond government.

🔵 Jesper Christiansen, Co-founder of States of Change and former Head of Research at MindLab, providing a systemic view on building lasting innovation infrastructure within the
public sector.

Back to Studio: Session 4 ✨
From the studio to the front lines of systems change! Our cohort spent the evening learning from two designers leading the way in national healthcare and strategic consultancy.

Our Guest Speakers:
🔵 Rosa ‘Rosikaa’ Fernández (MA 2020): Senior Service Designer at NHS England, sharing 20+ years of expertise in systemic change.
🔵 Tom Blackmore: Current RCA Product Design student and former Senior Service Designer at EY Studio+.

Huge thanks to Rosa and Tom for showing us how design scales in the real world!

seren

🔵 Bridging Design & Code: RCA x Imperial

Design meets development! A group of us from our cohort recently took on a unique leadership opportunity as tutors for ‘Designing for Real People’ course.

Stepping into a coaching role, we had the chance to guide 2nd-year Computer Science teams through the complexities of human-centred design.

This collaboration is more than just a workshop; it’s an invaluable platform for us to build professional mentorship skills, share expertise, and influence the next generation of technical
innovators.

In our 2nd term, we ran a series of seminars that explore and reflect on the urgent contemporary challenges that service designers can address and the strengths and limitations of service design approaches in addressing these challenges.

In our second seminar: Creative Practices, Design and Emerging Technologies, we took a deep dive into how designers are responsible for shaping interactions with the intelligent, autonomous systems transforming today’s services. The discussion delved into the practicalities of making AI trustworthy and accountable, navigating highly regulated environments, and the empowering potential of designers building their own AI tools. By bridging the gap between technical complexity and human-centred design, we examined how these emerging technologies influence societal outcomes and the future of our creative practice.

Speaker Lineup
● David Eveleigh-Evans, Design Leader, Co-founder of KEI, and RCA Service Design Tutor
● Helene Benz, Lead Conversational AI Designer at Lloyds Banking Group
● Gonzalo Maza, Oscar-winning Screenwriter and Lecturer at the University of Manchester

Nothing beats good friends, a challenge, and a packed game night! 💖 Making memories and building connections outside the classroom.
Whether it’s a high-stakes round of Catan or a classic game of Backgammon, the studio energy is always better when we’re playing together.