The course objectives are to learn principles of wicked problems and tools that have been designed for them. The stronger focus will be on the Mess Mapping tool created by a Stanford emeritus researcher Horn (Horn & Weber, 2007). Wicked problems are complex problems such as unemployment, immigration, childhood obesity, sustainability to name a few (Suoheimo et al., 2020). Design tools to address wicked problems are limited (Suoheimo, 2016; 2019), however, Mess Mapping in one of them. This is a central tool of the course that will capacitate students to grapple what different complexities in service design. The aim of the course is for students to learn Mess Mapping and how to apply the approach to service design projects. Together with learning the basics of Mess Mapping students will also consider, via Service Blueprints (or other tools), how the macro level understanding could be brought down to micro and meso levels of services. Students will create and design recommendations on what to consider when making a service blueprint. These recommendations could be designed in a form of a leaflet, video or any other creative way that are contextually relevant in a specific case. There will be discussion and reflection on whether blueprint is the best tool for conveying findings during mess mapping or for context, or if indeed other service design tools could be used to take the macro level down to the service level.

The aim of the course is for students to learn how the mess mapping tool will aid in understanding the macro level of the service design problems that can be wicked, political, involve multiple stakeholders, have several policies and laws that need to be considered. The tool will aid in understanding the root causes, causalities, and interconnectedness of the wicked problems in question, and in turn aid in the dialogue and understanding of the stakeholders that share the challenges or problems in common.

During the mapping sessions, students will learn facilitation skills and how to listen and give space for people to talk and participate. In the end students will learn synthesizing and questioning the complexity in question and understand what possible domino effects an intervention in the system may cause. It will require students to learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, not knowing what the end result or deliverables will be but to trust in the process. It is essential to understand that wicked problems have taken decades if not centuries to form and for this reason might need longer timeframes than current service design practice to unmake them or better mitigate the challenge. For this reason, we will touch on ‘transition design’ principles.

With the course being short, we will only make a partial Mess Map, but this will allow for an understanding of the principles of Mess Mapping. Students will create recommendations on how the information gathered could be transferred into practice via Service Blueprinting (or other tool, if found to be more appropriate for the case) in a real context. Students will also learn skills of working in groups and running a design project in a complex context.

The course will consist of group work, where the mapping tool will be experimented with together with external stakeholders (if possible). There will be reading assignments and each student will write a learning diary of the activities they learn during the course.