Benedict Singleton on socio-technical assemblages
Benedict Singleton is in the later stages of a practice-based PhD on service design at Northumbria University.
In his research he uses “critical, self-directed design projects, alongside literary and ethnographic strategies, to rethink some basic assumptions about service design – which have proliferated so quickly and widely that they constitute an emerging orthodoxy.”
“From this position, service design is not ‘about’ dampening the ecological impact of human activity, the expansion of the third sector, designing pleasant and saleable ‘experiences’, ‘wellbeing’ or ‘community’. These are applied goals. Service design is ‘about’ designing systems of interpersonal exchange, and the socio-technical assemblages that result from this process. These assemblages are actors that (re-)shape landscapes – urban, rural, domestic, material, social, psychological.”
