I wrote this Editor's Letter to introduce Touchpoint Vol. 10 No. 2, with the topic 'Designing the Future'
As the pace of technological innovation continues unbroken, the services we use in our day-to-day lives more and more resembles the stuff of science fiction films.
Voice-driven assistants who can schedule appointments on our behalf and medical diagnoses carried out with the support of AI are already today’s reality. But each of these developments carry complex design challenges within them. How do we ensure that services based on cutting-edge technology meet not only our traditional requirements for successful services (e.g. that they’re usable and intuitive) but also new ones, such as trustworthiness and transparency?
In this issue of Touchpoint, we focus on what our practice will look like - or should look like - as it moves into the world of tomorrow. From discussions on how artificial intelligence can best be harnessed to improve service experiences (read article here) to projects aimed at harnessing the power of augmented reality to improve in-store experiences (read article here), the complex interplay of technological considerations and service experiences are explored in fascinating detail by this issue’s authors. In addition, service designers themselves have turned their foresight techniques on their own profession, postulating what our discipline might look like in the short to
medium term (read article here).
All in all, this issue applies a unique and future-focussed perspective on our discipline that I find very intriguing, and I hope you do too!
Touchpoint is published three times each year by the Service Design Network
