This is not a presentation about the best Service Design projects in Latin America. It is an attempt to rethink Service Design from a Latin American perspective, bringing to the fore the contradictions that are behind design problems and that are usually overlooked. In this short talk, the contradiction of oppression is uncovered, with the ethical implications it pose to service designers. This perspective builds upon the Latin American tradition of critical thinking (Freire, Boal, Fals Borda, Martín-Barbero, Fanon, Vieira Pinto, Escobar, Gutiérrez Borrero, Bonsiepe, Dussel, Cusicanqui, Flusser, and others), in contrast to dominant US and European Service Design schools of thought and practice.

1. Latin American
Service Design
Frederick van Amstel
http://fredvanamstel.com
Service Design and Experience Design chair
UTFPR, Curitiba, Brazil

2. Disclaimer: this is not a presentation about the best Service
Design projects in Latin America. It is an attempt to rethink
Service Design from a Latin American perspective.

3. Service Design aims at providing a coherent user experience
across various service touchpoints (Polaine et al, 2013)

4. Is it possible to design an
experience for someone else?
Service Design believes it is
possible to do that indirectly,
through systemic thinking. Systems
provide conditions for various
experiences.

5. The German Nazi party had the most comprehensive design
system ever created, covering a wide range of experiences.

6. Service Design asks too
much about how and too
little about why.

7. Ride-hailing services are designed for cheap, fast, and
customized mobility experience.

8. Why-why-why technique
• Why do you want a silent ride feature in your digital
transportation service?
• Because some passengers don't want to talk to
drivers and they are willing to pay an extra for that
• Why?
• Because they want to do something else in the ride
• Why?
• Because they are busy people

9. Uber rolled out a premium feature for the passenger to ask the
driver to remain silent in 2019.

10. Even if passengers and drivers
are fine with that, is this what
should be done?
Service Design hardly asks
ethical questions.

11. Should the passenger/customer experience be more important
than the courier/driver experience?

12. Critical thinking is essential
to understand what is really
going on in Latin America
because authoritarian
narratives still prevails.

13. People think it is ok because
oppression is normalized.
Adopting Silicon Valley technologies is normal.
Exploiting workers is normal.
Not talking to different people is normal.
Avoiding black people is normal.
Harassing women is normal.
Making fun of LGBTQI+ people is normal.
Displacing indigenous people is normal.
...

14. Latin American Service Design
• Builds upon the Latin American tradition of critical
thinking (Freire, Boal, Fals Borda, Martín-Barbero,
Fanon, Vieira Pinto, Escobar, Gutiérrez Borrero,
Bonsiepe, Dussel, Cusicanqui, Flusser, and others)
• Does not align with dominant US and European
Service Design schools of thought and practice
• Digs deep into the contradictions that are behind
design problems, for example, oppression

15. Starting with who questions:
Who serves and who is served?
Who uses and who is used?
Who designs and who is designed?

16. People are part of historically privileged or underprivileged
social groups. Access to digital technology is a privilege.

17. A survey conducted with UTFPR students at the beginning of the
COVID-19 isolation measure. We withdrew online teaching.

18. Treating everybody equally is
not the same as sharing
privileges. Sharing privileges is
not the same as fighting
oppression.

19. Historically
privileged social
groups
Historically
underprivileged
social groups
Design practice
that reproduces
structural
oppression
unknowingly
Design epistemologies
of the North
Design methodologies
of the North
Design practice
that fights
oppression and
seeks liberation
Design epistemologies
of the South
Design methodologies
of the South
Decolonization
Hybridization
Designed
interactions
Latin American Service Design within the academic world.

20. Latin American
Service Design is also
a radical praxis.

21. Userism: reducing or patronizing the technology handiness of a
certain social group to a user level (Gonzatto, 2018).
Sexual
orientation
Race
Class
Technology
handiness
Gender
Intersectionality

22. The userist designer (white male anglo hetero) adopts a user-
centered design perspective to save users from bad design...

23. ... but he ends up saving only his ass (www.uxherocomics.com).
please read this

24. Designers are also eventually oppressed by userism, just like by
capitalism, sexism, racism, and LGBTphobia.

25. Latin American Service Design
takes the side of the oppressed.
It is design for the oppressed by
the oppressed.

26. Can design liberate the oppressed
from userism?
Can we, the oppressed, make use of
design in our fight against all forms
of oppression?

27. Anthropophagic Studio at Faber-Ludens (2007-2011) and PUCPR
(2015-2019) (Van Amstel & Gonzatto, 2020).

28. Infradesign at Corais Platform www.corais.org (Pelanda, 2019).

29. Feminist Coalition Design for Women Coffee Workers (Eleutério
& Van Amstel, 2020).

30. Design & Oppression Network
www.designeopressao.org (2020).

31. Latin American Service Design
asks the hard questions.
For whom and with whom are
we designing? Should we design
in this way? Can we design
otherwise?

32. Obrigado!
Thank you!
Frederick van Amstel
http://fredvanamstel.com
Service Design and Experience Design chair
UTFPR, Curitiba, Brazil