This article reports on an empirical study that investigates the work experience of graduates from a service design program in a leading art and design institution. Drawing on the findings from reviewing 30 online profiles of the graduates and interviewing 12 of them, this article explores the challenges and opportunities for service design as a profession in relation to the current demand in private-, public-, and third-sector organizations. The article concludes that the scope and integrity of service design within organizations depends on the organizational contexts, for example, how service design is perceived and how open the organization is to new ways of working; therefore, it could be said that it is potentially compromised by a lack of frameworks that underpin service design practice. In many ways, service design has become a responsive reformulation of practices from different fields. Although the demand for the service design graduates from this program is high, the continuous development of service design depends on the extent of success of the experiments and implementation achieved by its early adopters.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Sun, Q. and Runcie, C. (2016), Is Service Design in Demand?. Design Manag J, 11: 67-78. doi:10.1111/dmj.12028, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/dmj.12028. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.