Fantastic lecture by ass. Professor Ted MAthews on rituals in life and in design. This resulted in a very interresting cross over between systemic design and rituals. How are rituals drivers in social systems?
Ted finalised his PhD at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in 2021. Here is the excert:
EXPLORING SACRED SERVICE DESIGN
This PhD focuses on the design of experience-centric services through the utilisation of concepts and practices relating to the study of the sacred.
Sacred experiences are often activated through ritual, myth and symbols of meaning connected to communities and their values. Such experiences can be life changing events such as weddings, but also found in other experiences like sporting events or calendrical rites such as birthdays. We also witness sacred
experiences through consumption of services and brands. To date, in service design research and practice, there has not been an exploration of how such experiences might be designed for, and how service design might be informed by concepts of the sacred.
This PhD takes up this exploration through practice-based design research, supported by methods located within qualitative inquiry. This research was done through a series of design cycles in collaboration with four large service providers
to explore theories relating to the sacred for the development of a new approach for service design by drawing from concepts and practice from socio-cultural domains to weave them together with service design practice.
The PhD contributions are in identifying and developing interdisciplinary themes between socio-cultural domains and service design. The resulting Sacred Services Approach offers for practice an approach for the design of experience-centric services that utilises ritual, myth and symbol. The approach
enables a discussion of how service design can integrate concepts and practice from socio-cultural domains into the discourse on service design.