The first Service Design Now was held at RMIT University in late 2017, with around 200 people attending the RMIT Design Hub for a series of talks and workshops celebrating the growth of the community in Melbourne.
We'd been organising monthly events as part of Service Design Melbourne for several years, and the feeling was that Service Design had reached a level of maturity in Australia. This had been leading to new discourses and discussions around the direction the field had been heading. Responding to this, we invited speakers from across academia, startups and the enterprise to go beyond the 'show and tell' – diving into the challenges faced in our practice through a broad spread of conference presentations, workshops, discussion groups and more. Speakers were asked to share their 'War Stories' – the kind of stories told in the pub at the end of the week, rather than what you would usually hear at a conference or read about online.
Since then we've grown exponentially – becoming a bi-annual event for Service Designers from around Australia and the globe. We'd like to thank all the speakers and facilitators below who have been part of this journey and openly shared their stories with the community.
We donate 10% of our revenue to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, to help create real change in our community. If you enjoy the day please consider doing the same.
