exciting intern opportunity

One of the reasons I chose to do my Masters degree was because I wanted to network myself and get my name recognised. My undergraduate course gave me little help doing this.

So 2 weeks into my MDes degree at the University of Dundee, I have an exciting intern opportunity to research and design with a European Partner. The internship, which would form a significant chunk of my Masters, involves the exploration of methods and methodologies from other areas of design which can be more successfully used and adapted as part of a design process in Service and Product Design.

This sounds right up my street as I am a firm believer that all designers should adopt a multi-disciplined approach. There are obvious crossovers in all areas of design which should be recognised; in fact it was Christine Kingsley who opened up my eyes to service design a few years ago whilst I was studying Product Design. 3 friends from my class last year executed excellent service design honours projects, Lauren Currie with her Douceurs project; Garry Burns with Grapevine FM; and Kathleen McLaughlin with Re-Fresh.

Furthermore, Lynsey Duncan, a 2007 graduate from the same Innovative Product Design Course, immediately after graduating landed a job with Live|Work, arguably the most most recognised Service Design company in the UK.

The essence of Live|Work's approach to service design is summed up perfectly on their homepage:

Most organisations agree that their services should be oriented towards the customer. Why then, does it happen so often that we have appalling experiences when we use banks, buses, health services, insurance companies and other services? Why are they not designed as well as the products we love to use such as an Apple iPod or BMW car?

My point exactly!