UnSee is a research from the
Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano investigating how service design practices are evolving by uncovering, at the operational level, its link with systemic and future-oriented perspectives to achieve system-level transformation.

Scroll down to read the research updates, 
published papers, and expert practitioners’ interviews,
explore the uncertainty of future service design practices.

Between Transitions

This event will create a space for discussions and reflections starting from the insights of the research called UnSee (Uncertainty in Services). The research from the Design Department of Politecnico …

In the previous episodes

UnSee Update #8 // January – February 2025 Words by: Riccardo Torta It’s been a while since our last update, but things are going great for us. This will be a short update because, even …

End of the year for UnSee

UnSee Update #7 // December 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta Between the end of November and December 2024, our team has been busy with two main tasks: organizing and conducting an internal workshop to …

No-Stop November – discussions in progress

UnSee Update #6 // November 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta This month has been a whirlwind of many different activities happening for the UnSee team and research, just as the crisp winter air of …

New Knowledge Joins the Chat

UnSee Update #5 // October 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta The month of October was marked by the creation of new content and knowledge for the research. Most of it was internal, but some external …

Networking and Synthesising

UnSee Update #4 // September 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta September was definitely a busy month for the UnSee team, fresh and rested from the summer holidays, we jump head into our busy schedules …

From the Interviews to the Insights

UnSee Update #3 // July 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta We are reaching the end of July, so it’s time for another UnSee update!  After finishing the round of interviews with expert practitioners …

Wrapping up the interviews

UnSee Update #2 // June 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta June is coming to an end, and so is our first round of interviews. During the first part of the month, we had the luck of engaging in illuminating …

Starting the first round of interviews

UnSee Update #1 // May 2024 Words by: Riccardo Torta (This is an excerpt from a post on our Linkedin Page) During May we’ve been involved in some heavy mapping, gathering case studies and …

❋ The name stands for “Uncertainty in Services” a call to reflect on the effects of the polycrisis expanding in how services are designed, co-created and evaluated with the ecosystem’s actors.

❋ We understand systemic perspectives as those providing a panoramic view of the ecosystem to designers (Tjendra, 2018) helping them consider actors within a wider and holistic frame to develop new value systems and more profound structural changes (Jones, 2014; 2018; Drew et al., 2021).

❋ We aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice by investingating how service design practitioners are currently responding to the polycrisis’ challenge in their projects.

❋ Anticipatory, speculative, and critical perspectives that provoke new ways of thinking and reframe issues by crafting imagination and visions of possible futures (Auger, 2013; Dunne and Raby, 2013; Mitrovic, 2015), They are ontologically uncertain and emergent, prioritising the creation of empathy and proactive engagement towards forthcoming challenges (Celi & Morrison, 2019).