Design as a Meta-Mode of Inquiry for Advancing Social Innovation: Problem-Based Learning In Service Design Pedagogy

Malpass argued that design practice, ‘moves away from traditional approaches that limit the design's role to the production of profitable objects, focusing instead on a practice that is interrogative, discursive and experimental’. ‘The transition to a sustainable society is one of the biggest design challenges the human race has ever faced. Meeting this challenge will require countless designed solutions that will be created by people from all walks of life, using design thinking and design processes.’ Thus, design education for the 21st Century requires different skills and design educators are challenged to teach new skills, within an already packed curriculum . Although Service Design (SD) research and practice have flourished as a discipline in recent years , there is a need to reflect on the design pedagogy of SD and focus on the transition of knowledge inquiry in the process of tackling wicked problems in design 3.0 and 4.0. As service design engages with larger and complex problems, design education needs to reflect these transitions.