Developing Short-Term Exchange for Master's Degree Students in Digital Service Design

Abstract

In order to respond to the challenges posed by networked and complex digital service constellations, new competences and methods that can be used to facilitate digital service design are required. The service design and agile approaches have been rapidly adapted among designers. The service design methods and tools have proven to be very effective in bringing users experience into the focus of the design process, while agile methods seem to complement the service design approach by providing tools and procedures for iterative designing and testing of digital services.

The existing international student exchange financial instruments require a relatively long exchange time. On the other hand, applicants for the master’s degree programs in digital service design (at UAS) must have a suitable bachelor's or master's degree completed, and at least three years of work experience after graduation. This implies that digital service design master’s degree students are mainly full-time employees, and therefore the commitment to the financial conditions of the existing international student exchange instruments may be challenging for them. Consequently, there is a lack of international cooperation programs for higher education that support flexible short-term exchanges and mobility and that are widely targeted to several countries.

Together these conditions have resulted in the need for (1) developing the content and practices in digital service design studies, and (2) novel short-term international student exchange for master’s degree students in the field of digital service design. The purpose of this paper is to find out how the service design approach could benefit from agile development methods in digital service design studies. The aim of the paper is to develop a new concept for short-term international student exchange for master’s degree students in digital service design. The short-term exchange pilot is a part of a project called Finnish Design Academy, which focuses on developing a new collaboration model that aims to strengthen the role of higher education in design within the Finnish innovation ecosystem as well as to promote the internationalization of design education.

This paper describes an international student exchange pilot that was conducted jointly by Laurea University of Applied Sciences (Laurea) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) during spring 2019. Laurea provided the pilot with the service design approach and UAB the engineering view for agile software prototyping. The objectives of the pilot were: (1) to provide students with competence to use diverse development methods and tools flexible at all stages of the service design process in a digital context; and (2) to outline a new concept for short-term international student exchange for master’s degree students in digital service design. The pilot extended understanding of new digital service design competences based on the service design approach and agile development methods. Based on that understanding, a new concept for short-term international students exchange for higher education students in digital service design was created. The results also indicate that the competences from Laurea and UAB are complementary. The main contribution of this paper is the new concept for short-term international student exchange aimed at providing them with the ability to design digital services with agile methods.