Plurality of Service Design from a Cultural Perspective: Collective Discourses in East and Southeast Asia

In the domain of design, Asian countries predominantly engage with established frameworks and methodologies, often integrating them from other regions rather than pioneering new ones. This adaptation of philosophies, principles, and methods from various design domains—including human-centered design, interaction design, and user experience design—has been critiqued for its alignment with Western rationalism and neoliberalism, leading to a monolithic view of design. This issue is pronounced in service design, where dominant narratives overshadow the diverse cultural contexts of application. The trend of formalizing service design processes in Asian organizations risks perpetuating this monolithic perspective, neglecting socio-cultural nuances. To address this challenge, reflective dialogues among Asian service design practitioners and researchers are crucial. This chapter introduces an initiative fostering such dialogues, involving service design practitioners and researchers from Japan, South Korea, Mainland China, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. These discussions revisit service design concepts from cultural perspectives and identify practical challenges and strategies for effective implementation. The findings highlight the need for a nuanced approach to service design in East and Southeast Asia, proposing a future research agenda for its sustained development.