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| Dr Gayle Rice receives her award from Professor Birgit Mager |
Dr Gayle Rice, a researcher at The Glasgow School of Art has won the inaugural Student Award at the prestigious Service Design Awards for her PhD project which focused on Leaving Care Services. Gayle beat off competition from graduate research students across Europe and America.
Gayle Rice worked with one of Glasgow City Council’s Leaving Care Teams and The Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum’s to re-design interactions between leaving care workers and young people when they discuss where they would like to live as they leave care. With young people who had experienced the care service featuring prominently in statistics about vulnerable young adults, the outcomes of her project will contribute to improvements to the design of this service.
“I am grateful to Glasgow City Council and The Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum for supporting this research, giving me the opportunity to work with people who are experts in accessing and providing the Leaving Care service,” says Gayle Rice.
Working in partnership with young people and workers Gayle co-designed roles, activities and products that supported and enabled significant improvements to young people’s experiences of the leaving care process. As a consequence young people said they felt more supported during this discussion, relationships between people improved, and young people were able to clearly articulate how and where they might live when becoming independent.
Gayle and Glasgow City Council are reviewing how to roll this service design out to all of the Leaving Care Services in Glasgow and there are opportunities to share the template of this design with other local authorities in Scotland and further afield.
“Gayle’s study was highly challenging, but she successfully brought to light the difficult nature of the decision-making process faced by young people when leaving the care service,” says Professor Alastair Macdonald, Senior Researcher in School of Design at the GSA. “Using participatory design methods, Gayle was able to develop and evidence an approach that positively enhanced the experience of the decision-making process for young people.”
“Her thesis reflects one key aspect of the Age, Health and Care Research being undertaken here the School of Design,” he adds “Our PhD candidates are embedded in the health and care settings in which their studies are located. This is combined with robust methodological and evidential processes.”
Oliver King, Head of Jury and founder of Engine said:
“The Jury were extremely impressed with Gayle’s project which demonstrated a highly effective service design intervention in a complex and emotional setting.
Gayle demonstrated a thorough, collaborative service design process that culminated in developing powerful tools and capabilities for her client.
The project had a hugely positive effect with a remarkable shift of outcomes for young people. We’re proud and delighted that Gayle has won the first Student Design Award”
Councillor Matt Kerr, Glasgow City Council’s Executive Member for Social Justice, said: “Gayle’s designs helped to stimulate important discussions between care staff and the young people in our care. Their comments and responses created a clearer picture of how the young people saw themselves in future and this allowed staff to develop plans accordingly. We always welcome effective innovation within social work and will look carefully to see if there is a wider use for these designs within our services.”
The award was presented at the 9th annual Service Design Global Conference which this year took place in Amsterdam.
Ends
Further information on the GSA
Lesley Booth
0779 94 4474
@GSofAMedia
Further information on the Service Design Award / Service Design Network
Holly Syrett at GW Agency
+31(0)6 45 57 81 21
Notes for Editors
Gayle Rice
Gayle Rice conducted a PhD at The Glasgow School of Art for her professional development so as to ensure her practice as a service designer was more informed and so as to be able to understand the impact that a practice can have on people and communities. The acknowledgment by SDN contributes to her professional goal to share evidence about the contribution and impact of service design.
Service Design
Service design is a design field which concerns itself with the design of services. Taking a customer-centred viewpoint, service designers work to improve the delivery of a service, with the aim of maximising value for both the customer and the service provider. Examples of service design in action are the co-ordination of all the interactions a customer has with their bank, the optimisation of a patient’s healthcare experience within a hospital or the development of a multimedia tour to complement a museum exhibit and make it fun for the whole family. A relatively young design discipline, service design can trace its roots back approximately 20 years. With today’s exponential growth of complex, often digital-led services – alongside the recognition of customer experience as a positive differentiator – service design is rapidly growing and evolving. Service design is increasingly being seen as critical to business success.
About the Global Service Design Awards
The Service Design Award is the premier award for service design. It is organised by the Service Design Network (SDN), the global organisation for service design professionals, academia and business, the headquarter is based in Germany, Cologne. Since benefits of service design are often difficult to explain, while quite easily proven, Service Design Award aims to provide a clear guideline for clients and consultants to better understand, judge and value service design projects and the competence and quality of people and organisations working in the field of service design. The Award recognises outstanding work in the field of service design in both commercial, public and academic categories. It is open to any organisation or individual worldwide and the work will be judged by a jury of internationally recognised professionals.
Student Service Design Award
The ceremony of the Service Design Award 2016 was integrated into the 9th annual Service Design Global Conference program, which is now taking place in Amsterdam on October 27th- 28th.
www.service-design-award.com
About SDN
The Service Design Network is recognised as the global leader in advancing the practice of service design. Through events, knowledge- sharing, news, case studies, publications, trend reports, an Award programme and local Chapters, it aims to both support service design practitioners and increase recognition of the field. The SDN Members community represents corporate, professional and student members, and is enlarged by a substantial online community of over 30,000 people. The SDN currently has 18 Chapters worldwide.