Reflecting on a year of success at the Service Design Academy

As we prepare our out of office messages signifying the end of 2024, the Service Design Academy team take pride as we reflect on a year of achievement, growth and change. We wanted to share and celebrate the efforts of the individuals and organisations we have empowered to drive meaningful change through service design in 2024.

Our learner's successes

Professional Development Award

Over 30 students developed their service design practice through our flagship Professional Development Award, continuing to build service design capability that will make a difference to services and people's lives.

Our PDA learners have researched, identified problems, co-designed prototypes, and delivered people-centred solutions across a range of real-world services. Thanks to our learner's hard work this year, empathy-led design has impacted everything from improving waiting spaces at HM Passport Office to making the Prince's Trust more accessible to care experienced young people.

Short courses

We also welcomed over 120 learners who started their service design journey with our online short courses, lighting the service design spark everywhere from busy central London to the rural Miners' Memorial Hall in Kirkconnell and Kelloholm.

Successes in businesses and communities

A big part of our work this year was developing learning programmes for resilient businesses and community. Thanks to our collaborations with learning partners taking a human-centred approach, the SDA team were presented with a range of societal and business challenges this year.

Working towards a circular economy in Scotland

We are grateful that the team at Zero Waste Scotland has embraced taking a service design approach including the co-creation of an innovative game that brings stakeholders together to drive change.

Prototyping healthcare policy with DHSC

We worked with the Department of Health and Social Care to teach colleagues how to prototype policy to improve healthcare outcomes for citizens affected by obesity.

Transforming employability services in Dumfries and Galloway

We continued our transformational partnership with Dumfries and Galloway Local Employability and Skills Partnership. By building user research and co-design skills with key workers, third sector partners and residents exciting projects to improve parental employability are being developed through community consultants' peer learning.

Creating new courses in decarbonisation

We developed new customised courses for businesses with the Dundee and Angus College Business Partnership team, helping to get to grips to tackle problems and create plans to reduce carbon emissions.

Dundee's successes

Supporting Dundee Changemakers

We supported local group Dundee Changemakers to build an evaluation framework to support a joint vision for a sustainable and inclusive future with and for Dundee’s communities.

Collaborating with local designers

We worked with Gary Kennedy and Linsey McIntosh at the CANDU (Dundee Cancer Support Network) conference in the V&A Dundee where kimonos were created inspired from the insights of people living with cancer's experience

Introducing design to young people at Braeview Academy

Young people at Braeview Academy (with the support of Developing the Young Workforce and Education Scotland ) designed spaces for young people using Lego for prototyping.

Our team's successes

Celebrating Kim Anderson

Kim Anderson achieved Master Trainer Accreditation from the Service Design Network this year. She shared the successes of Scottish Social Services Council 's service design learning pathway with delegates at Futurescot DigitalScotland.

Bidding a happy retirement to our colleague Janine

We said "goodbye for now" to our colleague Janine Wilson who "retired" from SDA to pursue her range of non-executive director roles, tireless support of curling in Scotland, growing her design consultancy business Change Frameworks, and travelling up and down the country in her camper and caravan. We look forward to our paths crossing again with future service design collaborations!

Attending industry events

We participated in industry events like UX Scotland , #DigitalScotland, and the Society of Personnel Development #SPDS to connect with others and grow our knowledge.

Receiving funding to research service design training and education

We received the exciting news that our proposed Test and Learn research project into service design training and education will be funded by The Scottish Government supporting collaboration with academic institutes and agencies in the Netherlands in early 2025.

Thank you

Thank you to each and every one of our learners, partners and advocates for being a part of our journey. Here’s to another year of success and growth!