Call for Papers | RMIT Design Archives Journal 17.1, 2027 | Designing services, strategies & systems

The Design Institute of Australia’s ‘Write DESIGNER’ campaign, which preceded the 2026 Census, encouraged all working designers to identify their occupation. This was part of a longer term campaign to build the case for Service Designer and Strategic Designer to be formally recognised within Australia’s occupation classification framework. Subsequently, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has officially included Service Designer in the draft Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) ahead of its March 2027 release, and DIA continues its advocacy for Strategic Designer among other design-specific classifications.

A similar initiative was undertaken in New Zealand in 2017 through the Value of Design to New Zealand Report which defined one design sector, comprising of nine design disciplines and 264 design processes. Service Design and Strategy were two of the nine design disciplines named in that report.

Given that policy is informed by such census data (except in New Zealand where the five yearly census in 2028 has been cancelled), it is vital that these occupation classifications keep pace with developments in the industry. This is especially so when one of the earliest references to Service Design is a 1984 article in the Harvard Business Review, ServDes the Service Design & Innovation conference was conceived in 2007 and its 7th conference (and first outside of Europe) was held in Melbourne in 2020-21, in part due to the success of Service Design Melbourne, which was founded in 2010 by Yoko Akama and Dianne Moy.

Strategic Design can similarly be traced back to the 1980s in the academic literature and in practice, and the University of Otago’s Design Studies Department introduced an Honours course in Strategic Design in its program in 2006.

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