Redjotter

more detail

With an enthusiasm for service design, design thinking and social innovation, Lauren Currie is a member of The Social Design Taskforce who passionately believes that designers have the ability to assist social and cultural change.

Educated in Scotland, Lauren Currie holds an Honours Degree in Innovative Product Design, and graduated in 2009 with  Masters Degree in Design, with Distinction, from the University of Dundee, where she focused on exploring and defining Service Design.

Lauren’s evolving honours project Douceurs is an example of her work, a service solution enabling people to send letters to their future. This poetic service solution captured the personal touch of traditional communication methods and, in December 2008, was entered into the RSA Design Directions 2008/09 brief After the Post Office, for which Lauren established an online overview of the project process and solution.

As a developing design writer, Lauren’s review of the 2007 Intersections Conference was published in Networks Magazine and her 2008 undergraduate dissertation, “An Exploration into the Evolving Field of Service Design”, was reviewed by key thinkers in the field. This investigative study included interviews with; John Thackara, Bill Hollins, Stefan Moritz, Kevin Gavaghan, Gill Wildman, Nick Durrant, Nico MacDonald and Nina Belk.

After graduating, in August 2008 Lauren worked as a freelance Service Designer for Arne van Oosterom, in Holland’s Designthinkers organisation. Mentoring and teaching undergraduate students on service design enabled Lauren to spend 2008 running a variety of workshops and lectures on Service Design, Ethnography and Critical Thinking. In November 2008, Lauren co–led a Design for Social Change workshop at Glasgow School of Art, for thinkpublic’s graduate initiative The Real Work Experience. And, later in November, Lauren attended the first European Service Design Conference in Amsterdam.

Currently, Lauren is representing Scotland for mental health movement MindApples and having established Redjotter, also writes for Design Cultures and emotional intelligence blog Thriving too. During 2009, Lauren worked in Berlin with Deutsche Telekom Laboratories (T-Labs), on a three-month project investigating information communications for older users. In Easter 2009, Lauren worked with award winning social innovation and public service design agency thinkpublic.

During her Masters year Lauren has been scrutinizing the role of a service design graduate. She has written “A Call for Service!” that explores the opportunities for service design within the NHS and is currently aiming to get this paper published. The outcome of her Masters is ‘Making Service Sense’ ; a service that communicates to creative graduates what people think and talk about when it comes to Service Design.

Last year, Lauren ran a workshop at the Interactive conference for Experience design, Well-being and Service Design in Savonia University of Applied Sciences, Kuopio Academy of Design in Finland.

In 2009, Lauren established The Studio Unbound ; an initiative aiming to introduce students, graduates and educators to the creative power of social media. She was also a Service Design News Scout for the Service Design Network and is now an associate of Sociability.

She is the Director of MyPolice; a citizen feedback mechanism via the web (currently being built) followed by handholding and service redesign. She also works with Future Gov; a consultancy-come-social innovation incubator helping to shape the future of government.

Snook is a new and shiny initiative in Scotland where Lauren and Sarah Drummond make change happen through people, design and practical action.

——————————————————–

Contact: myredjotter (at) gmail (dot) com

——————————————————–

Follow me on Flickr
Join me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter
Join me on Linkedin

14 Comments so far
Leave a comment