It was pleasure to be invited to speak at Cranfield’s award-winning Centre for Design (C4D) on the relationship between brand and the principles of service design. About 30 sprightly postgraduate students attended.
The week long service design module was led on behalf of C4D by Dr. Ksenija Kuzmina, Lecturer in Industrial Design, Loughborough University (previously Lecturer in Design at C4D, Cranfield). Ksenija outlined:
“Darren’s delivery style is easy-going but professional, which resonated well with the postgraduate audience during a half-day workshop on Brand Experience that Darren led. The content of this workshop combined Darren’s industry expertise and academic background (holding a PhD in this area) to keep things informative and highly relevant.
“Cranfield is a postgraduate, industry-facing institution which meant that the content was well-suited for the attendees. The pace of the workshop combined with the delivery style and experiential breakout sessions meant the students were happy to participate. During these sessions, students had a chance to engage with various building blocks of Brand Experience including Persona Building and exploring Brand Positioning. The knowledge Darren brought stood out for the students, as was later evident in their assignments.”
Commenting on the session, Dr. Coleman noted:
“Service design is something the most innovative brands have focused on for several years but it’s starting to move into the mainstream now. The holistic nature of service design can make it something of an elusive and slippery beast. When you combine this with the intangibility and ambiguity that surrounds brand it’s a particularly challenging topic to grasp. That said, the students coped admirably. It was pleasing to see how quickly they grasped the connection between core branding concepts such as values and emotion with the principles of service design.”
Note: A special thank you to James Rock from The Design Thinkers Group (UK) who facilitated the introduction to Ksenija. If it wasn’t for James sailing across the Atlantic this opportunity would not have occurred. Cranfield or sailing the Atlantic? Hmmnn……