Integrating Eco-centric Perspective in Service Design Education

Abstract

Service design education operates from a foundational anthropocentric assumption, that humans are the central participants in any design process. This shapes what tools students learn, who counts as a stakeholder, and how success is defined, leaving the living world structurally absent from design processes. While growing recognition of ecological crisis has prompted calls for design education to shift beyond this paradigm, the pedagogical conditions through which an ecological orientation might be cultivated in learners remain largely unaddressed in service design education specifically.

This research develops guiding principles for integrating eco-centric perspectives into service design education through three interconnected research questions: what eco-centric pedagogical approaches exist that could inform Service Design teaching (RQ1), what challenges and gaps SD educators face in integrating these perspectives (RQ2), and what guiding principles can support this integration (RQ3).

A qualitative, interpretivist study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with seven participants: four service design educators from European higher education institutions and three educators working with eco-centric pedagogical approaches across Brazil, Canada, and Kenya. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

RQ1 findings identified six themes across eco-centric educator accounts, centring on place as active teacher, embodied and material knowing, slowness and cyclical duration, relational 1 learning, reciprocity, and positionality. RQ2 findings established that the gap in SD education is structural sustained by business partner logic, semester timelines, and the absence of pedagogical infrastructure for ecological integration.

From the synthesis of both sets of findings, four guiding principles emerged: Relational Thinking, Place as Teacher, Embodied and Sensory Learning, and Cyclical Reciprocity, constituting a pedagogical orientation grounded in relational ontology.