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Service Design Conferences 2023

Stay up-to-date with the latest trends in service design by attending a conference in 2023. From user experience to service innovation, there's something for everyone. Discover the must-attend events for the year ahead.

As the Service Design industry grows, many communities are hosting a conference for Service Designers.

Aside from the courses available online and onsite, conferences will be a big help for you. Connecting with peers, getting inspiration, sharing or gaining knowledge, and finding new job opportunities are the main motivations to attend conferences.

Here’s a list of Service Design conferences you could attend in 2023.

March

Learn more about SXSW 2023

SXSW

  • When: March 10 – 14, 2023
  • Where: Austin, TX, USA (In Person)
  • Ticket price: $795 – $1,595
  • Learn more about SXSW

Official description

The SXSW Conference allows the global community of digital creatives to encounter cutting-edge ideas, discover new interests, and network with other professionals who share a similar appetite for forward-focused experiences.

Featuring a variety of tracks that focus on the most important breakthroughs in technology, film, culture, and music, SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together.

Get ready to experience more opportunities for networking, learning, brainstorming, and career-enhancing connections than ever before at SXSW 2023.

April

Design & Innovation Executive Exchange

Official description

The D&I Executive Exchange is an event open to professionals across industries who work in design, UX research, CX, innovation, and more! This event will benefit anyone who is looking to enhance their team’s strategy, skillset, and acumen while engaging with Design & innovation experts across inspirational keynotes, interactive sessions, and networking opportunities throughout the event.

May

Organization Design Forum

Official description

A festival to explore ideas . . . Why is this our 2023 theme?

In this time of disruption and new possibilities, how do we respond? ODF is convening great thinkers and practitioners at all levels to explore proven, emerging, and daring design ideas that elevate the impact of organizations and their stakeholders.

Some of the keynote presentations that will be discussed are:

Organization design skills are relevant to anyone who has ever had to organize a team, restructure a business, realign to a new strategy, or create a place where people really want to work. Bring your perspective and curiosity to our highly engaging conference format. You’ll leave with genuine connections and newfound confidence in your ability to create successful and inspiring organizations.

  • Data-led Design: How Using Workload Drivers Leads to a Better Blueprint
  • Rouge Re-design: Where the Client Tells You to Throw Away “Provens” Design Approaches and Let Success Emerge
  • Designing for an Increasingly Fluid Workforce
  • New Strategies for Organization Design: Using the Peopletecture Model to Improve Collaboration and Performance

SDN Next Gen Conference

Official description

Join us for a virtual experience where you can learn from industry leaders, make career-changing connections, and meet global changemakers who share your passion for designing innovative and collaborative services.

Theme: Beyond Service Design in 2025. We’re taking a bold step into the future by focusing on the Next Generation of Service Designers. Through interactive workshops, engaging discussions, and inspiring sessions led by industry experts and young professionals with fresh minds, attendees will gain invaluable insights, innovative ideas, and unparalleled networking opportunities.

June

HOW Design Live

Official description

HOW Design Live is where inspiration, community, and creativity converge in a 3-day event that you can’t afford to miss. Become part of a creative community that embraces every attendee, validates your work, and empowers you to do great things.

HOW Design Live offers the creative inspiration to refuel your passion combined with the practical knowledge you need to achieve and advance in your career through incredible breakout sessions, keynotes, and workshops. Become part of a creative community that embraces every attendee, validates your work, and empowers you to do great things.

You should attend if you are, a DESIGNER of all stripes seeking to refine your skills, acquire and develop new skills, and have a positive impact on the world through the work you create for your clients, employers, or themselves. At the conference you will fuel your creativity — you’ll produce better design solutions, boost your output, and increase your value to your employer.

UX STRAT Europe

Office description

UX STRAT Europe is a unique conference curated specifically for research, design, product, and data science professionals in European countries, highlighting the latest methodologies and trends in product design strategy and innovation.

UX STRAT Europe will take place in Amsterdam on June 5 – 7, 2023 in the elegant KIT Auditorium. The theme of this conference, and all UX STRAT conferences in 2023, will be “Creating Business Value Through Design.”

UX STRAT Europe is a single-track conference and will include ample opportunities for getting to know other attendees as well as our speakers and sponsors. In addition to the product design strategy and innovation presentations, we will feature presentations about how to bring sustainability and humanity-centered design into the everyday work context.

Design Research Deep Dive

Official description

This event highlights the important role that research plays in the design process, helping designers understand the underlying needs, desires, and challenges of users to create more effective human-centered products.

The Design Research Deep Dive 2023 is a professional development-focused opportunity for you to grow your understanding of the research process, build on your existing research skillset, and hear from the industry’s leading voices in design research practice. You’ll come away from this event with skills and strategies to elevate your user-centered design practice and create better, and more desirable products that solve real user needs.

This is your chance to learn from the latest in human-centered design research methodology – how are design leaders integrating research into their strategy? How do we intersect with adjacent fields like UX Research, Human Factors, Anthropology, and more? How do we define value for our users? How are researchers adapting to remote methods – or new technologies like VR to better understand the holistic experience of end users? We’ll ponder these questions and more with industry insiders, who will help you learn tools and approaches that you can apply to your own work. By integrating the human perspective in every step of the problem-solving process using design research, you can help create more desirable, meaningful, and impactful products.

Frontiers in Service Conference

Official description

The theme of the 2023 edition of the Frontiers in Service conference alludes to the Roman roots of Maastricht and exemplifies the bridge from the past to the future. From a time when fire represented a service to a blacksmith, cook, and build cities as Maastricht – to a time when robots, artificial intelligence, and immersive technologies put service research in emotion.

The Frontiers in Service Conference features a unique mix of business people and academics from around the world with a cross-functional list of topics including service science, service innovation, service marketing, service operations, service human resources, service information technology, e-service, service innovation, and customer relationship management.

Speakers at the conference include many of the world’s leading service experts, including high-ranking executives and prominent academics.

July

ServDes

Official description

Theme: “Entanglements and Flows (Service Encounters and Meanings)”. ServDes, the Service Design and Innovation conference, is the premier research conference for exchanging knowledge within Service Design and service innovation studies. Born as a yearly Nordic conference, ServDes has now become a bi-annual international event with the aim of bringing researchers and practitioners together to discuss, share and evolve the emerging discipline of Service Design, and design-related service innovation.

August

UX Australia

Official description

A huge four-day conference for all the specialties and disciplines of UX design.
UX Australia is Australia’s premier conference about UX, product and service design, and the surrounding disciplines of research, content, operations, management, and more. 

The four-day event will focus on how design is being pushed in new and interesting ways. We’re keen to hear stories, insights, and real-world examples from people, brands, and companies who are doing this. 

Attendees join us from all around the world, flying into Sydney to maximize the conference experience or dialing in online. Attendees range from students and junior designers, all the way through to top-level CEOs, managers, and business owners. Common industries include Design, Education, Government, Software, IT, and Finance. Popular attendee job titles also include: UX Designer, Product Designer, Project Manager, Service Designer, UI Designer, Content Specialist 

UX Nordic Conference

Official description

The UX Nordic Conference will once again take place in Aarhus, Denmark, on 24 & 25 August 2023, consisting of one day with Masterclass Workshops and one day with Power Sessions.
From Enterprise UX to AI, from Accessibility to Research – we guarantee to hone your skills and to evolve you as a designer.

On top of that, we have stacked the event with lots of networking, a glamorous Award Show, a group run, plenty of fun stuff, and of course our iconic UX party.  If you are into UX – we promise you two days to remember!

September

UX STRAT USA

Official description

UX STRAT brings together experienced design and product professionals from around the world to share methodologies, innovations, and tools focused on strategic design and innovation. This is the perfect setting to learn new skills, get inspired by the best of the best, and meet your experienced peers in a beautiful location. Plan to join us in Boulder, CO on September 11 – 13, 2023 at the classic Boulder Theater, with a no-risk policy that allows simple ticket transfers if plans change before the event.

SDD Leadership Summit

Official description

In line with last year’s conference theme, in 2023 we will continue to focus on creating value for the long run. Much needs and can be done to improve upon tackling short-termism. In Barcelona on September 15 and 16, a special edition of the yearly Service Design Days will be organized for and by design leaders from around the world to converse about this pressing topic. Dedicated to unlocking servant leadership and translating ideas into impact, the Summit convenes creative leaders to connect, learn, build, discuss, share learnings, and challenge the status quo.

This SDD Leadership Summit spans four tracks spread over two days: Friday, September 15, and Saturday, September 16. The tracks are programmed through the lens of creative leadership, each with an immersive and interactive set-up. All tracks are a carefully curated selection of sessions and activities.

SDinGov

  • When: September 20 – 22, 2023
  • Where: Edinburgh, Scotland (In Person)
  • Ticket price: £275 – £625
  • Learn more about SDinGov

Official description

The original international community event for anyone involved in designing and commissioning public services. Returning for its 10th year, SDinGov is back for an in-person 3-day conference: 20-22 September 2023.

We attract participants who either manage, design or develop central and local government services, health and education services, emergency sector services, civic technologies and others including Government employees, consultants and design agencies.

Our curated event experience includes a mixture of inspiring keynotes, engaging live sessions, interactive group sessions, speaker Q&A – plus an all-important hallway track where you can meet and share experiences with fellow practitioners.

October

Service Design Global Conference

Official description

Building on the success of our first hybrid event last year, we are pleased to once again invite you for a deep dive into the trending topics, insights, and developments shaping the future of our practice. This year the Global conference will be taking place in the amazing and vibrant city of Berlin and also online. 
The Service Design Global Conference promises two days of interactive learning, keynote presentations, and, of course, in-person and virtual networking. Our goal is to bring the best in our industry together to share service design knowledge and new cross-disciplinary methods and thinking.

Design Thinking Conference

Official description

Design Thinking Conference is an annual event focused on exploring the power of empathy, the first phase of the Design Thinking process. Based on a theatrical format, we invite participants to be part of the Act, and actively experience the world through different viewpoints throughout the 2-day conference. 

At the Design Thinking Conference, we invite experts and researchers whose works center around empathy to share groundbreaking theories and insightful observations. We also invite you, our participants, to feel, to disrupt, to experiment, and to let yourself be surprised. 

AIGA Design Conference

Official description

Connect in person with your design community at the 2023 AIGA Design Conference in the Big Apple! Prepare to get inspired and re-energized while learning in the community from designers at the cutting edge of today’s hot topics.

Connect with your design community and fill your creative cup at the 2023 AIGA Design Conference in New York City, the city that never sleeps. Explore all of the creativity the Big Apple has to offer while learning and growing with other like-minded designers. 

November

Magnify

Official description

We will explore topics that support practitioners implement equity-seeking design and research processes in meaningful ways online, across timezones.

What we mean by diversity and inclusion

Many of us live in richly diverse societies, yet this diversity is not often reflected in products, services and systems offered because of the barriers that are created through their design.

For us, inclusive processes are about centering the voices of people from groups that have been marginalized by society and systems based on race, sexuality, age, ability, class, and/or language.

Did we miss something?

Did we miss any conferences that you think should be included on this list? Please share the link with us in the comments, and we’ll make sure to add it. Thank you for your contributions!

2 comments on “Service Design Conferences 2023”

  1. SDinGov – https://govservicedesign.net/
    The original international community event for anyone involved in designing and commissioning public services. Returning for its 10th year, SDinGov is back for an in person 3 day conference.

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