30 years of service design. Birgit Mager's farewell.
A one-day reunion at KISD. Talks, workshops, food trucks, and a yard party.
12 June 2026·From 09:30·Ubierring 40, Cologne
About the day
A reunion worth showing up for.
On 12 June 2026, we open the doors of KISD to celebrate more than 30 years of service design and the farewell of Birgit Mager, who has shaped the field from Cologne since 1995.
The day brings together different generations of the service design community: alumni, practitioners, students, collaborators, and friends of KISD. Expect a mix of talks and conversations, workshops, community-led formats, and plenty of room for the kind of networking that doesn't feel like networking.
Open, participatory, community-driven. Not a conference. A reunion.
The Service Design Now Team
Program
The day, hour by hour.
Talks and panels in the morning, parallel workshops after lunch, impulse talks in the afternoon, and an open courtyard gathering in the evening. Click any speaker name to jump to their bio.
10:00 – 10:20
Talk
Service Design Through Artifacts: 30 Years of Milestones
This short talk uses a selection of artifacts collected over three decades to reflect on key moments in the evolution of service design. From early experiments to global recognition, these objects tell stories of emerging ideas, changing practices, and the growing impact of service design on organizations, society, and everyday life. Through these tangible traces of the past, the talk offers a personal perspective on the field's journey and its continuing relevance for the future.
For more than 30 years, Birgit Mager has shaped the Service Design Network and the KISD community, fostering lasting professional and personal networks. This panel brings together three alumni whose careers began through SDN and Sedes and evolved in very different directions.
11:00 – 11:30
Talk
Service Design in HR: Building a People Service Platform at EnBW
What can design contribute within an HR organization? This talk shares insights into work as a designer shaping digital HR platforms, chatbots, and internal service systems in a corporate environment. We will show how to connect user needs, organizational processes and IT tools to build a dynamic service architecture.
Service design in the wild is nothing like the classroom. Both sisters, trained by Birgit Mager at KISD, learned the same hard truth from opposite sides: the most transformative design work happens in places deeply resistant to it, and getting there requires more than methods.
Over more than seven years, the collaboration between the Innovation Office of the City of Cologne and the Köln International School of Design has generated new perspectives and concepts for a wide range of public services, from waste management to libraries.
14:00 – 15:00
Parallel Workshops
Workshop 1
The Critical Pain That Once Drove Us to Learn & Innovate, You No Longer Feel
AI is already transforming the learning and innovation landscape. In our workshop, we examine what is lost when productive struggle and genuine failure are eliminated from the design process and consider what design education might look like if it consciously reintroduces them.
Workshop 2
No Green Fields: Adapting Service Design for Town Hall Constraints
Municipal governments often represent an extreme case of service design. What remains of service design methodology when almost nothing is feasible? Participants map well-known SD methods and principles onto a resilience matrix.
Workshop 3
Designing Between Two Worlds: Balancing Citizen Needs with Public Sector Bureaucracy
Public sector service design is a high-stakes balancing act. We will dissect real public sector scenarios to uncover where user needs and systemic constraints collide. You will walk away with a fresh diagnostic perspective and a simple checklist.
How are we serving women through the design of our products, services, and solutions? Let's challenge our own design work, uncover hidden biases, and explore what 'femtopia', more equitable, female-centered futures, could look like.
15:00 – 15:30
Coffee Break
15:30 – 16:10
Panel Discussion
Designing Services When AI and Robots Become Service Actors
As AI and robots become active participants in services, service design is moving beyond the orchestration of intended service experiences toward shaping the conditions that guide intelligent behavior. Kaya Kim (LG) and Mauro Rego (Google) will answer questions from Peter Schindlecker (ÖBB).
What does it actually take to turn a vision into reality? Service design gives us powerful tools to imagine better futures, but between strategy and impact lies a stretch of work that is slow, political, and often invisible.
Impulse Talk
Service Meets Strategy: Making Design Future Proof
How to survive as a designer in an AI-driven world? The human factor as one of our greatest assets, strategically applied in coexistence with AI, has the potential to create our desired future.
Service Design has its greatest impact not as a single method or project phase, but as a mindset that becomes sustainably embedded within organizations.
16:50 – 17:10
Talk
Navigating the Uncanny Valley of Agency: The GenAI Quasi-Creature in Service Design Education
The integration of Generative AI into service design education introduces a profound ontological paradox. We analyze the AI as a 'Quasi-Creature' and discuss how design education can help students maintain cognitive sovereignty during human-AI collaboration.
17:10 – 17:20
Closing Remarks
18:00 – 22:00
Open Courtyard Gathering
Speakers
The voices on the day.
21 practitioners, researchers, alumni, and friends of KISD. From Google to ÖBB, ING to LG, from public sector innovation to AI research, from design education to corporate HR.
1
Birgit Mager
Professor of Service Design, TH Köln
Birgit Mager is co-founder and president of the International Service Design Network and editor-in-chief of Touchpoint. Since 1995, she has held Europe's first professorship in Service Design at the TH Köln, University of Applied Sciences, playing a pioneering role in developing the field through research, education, publications, and practice. In 2020, she received the Sir Misha Black Award for outstanding contributions to design education. Since 2024, she has been a visiting professor and advisory board member at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2025, she received the ISSIP Lifetime Achievement Award and was named an honorary member of the German Design Club.
2
Cristine Lanzoni
Independent Service Design Consultant
Cristine Lanzoni is an independent Service Design Consultant and Agile Coach with a focus on Sustainable Innovation and Organisational Change. She is passionate about designing and improving human-centred services that meet the needs of both customers and businesses.
3
Daniela Beyerle
Head of Innovation and Development, Kolping Bildungswerk
After graduating from KISD with a diploma in Service Design, Daniela worked as a Service Designer at sedes and Participle in London. In 2009 she co-founded minds & makers, one of Germany's pioneering service design agencies, working with clients such as E.ON, Volkswagen, Vodafone and Facebook, as well as organizations including Save the Children, GIZ, Aktion Mensch and United Nations Development Programme. In 2020, she moved from consulting into the social sector. After serving as Innovation Manager at Diakonie, she now is Head of Innovation and Development at Kolping Bildungswerk.
4
Bettina Thielen
Head of Business Resilience Governance + Strategy, Telefónica
After graduating as a designer with a focus on Service Design, Bettina Thielen went on a journey: management consulting, freelance, sedes, SDN, managing director at service works and the Social Service Designers, and now Head of Business Resilience Governance + Strategy at Telefónica.
5
Zacharias Eibauer
Service Designer in Corporate HR
Graduated KISD in 2005, worked as experience designer, information architect and service designer in various agencies and now in a corporate HR environment.
6
Anastasia Tayts
Design Lead, Data & AI, ING
Anastasia is an identical twin, KISD alumna, and Service Design graduate of Birgit Mager. She has over a decade of experience spanning Deloitte Digital, Philips Supply Chain, and now leading Design in Data & AI at ING.
7
Alexandra Agafonova
Service Designer & Change Lead
Alexandra is an identical twin, KISD alumna, and Service Design graduate of Birgit Mager. Her experience spans leading digital upskilling at E.ON and embedding service design at DAK, making reluctant employees embrace change they never asked for.
8
Anastasia Bondar
Innovation Manager, City of Cologne
Anastasia graduated from KISD and is now an innovation manager for the city of Cologne, focusing on designing public and social innovation.
9
Katja Trinkwalder
Research Assistant, KISD
Katja graduated from KISD and is a research assistant at KISD (TH Köln), where she teaches and supports research projects in the Service Design department, including the research collaboration with the city of Cologne.
10
SDN Chapter NRW Germany
Regional Chapter of the Service Design Network
The SDN Chapter NRW Germany, founded in 2025, is the regional chapter of the Service Design Network in North Rhine-Westphalia. They strengthen connections across the region, foster a sense of community among members, and create a safe space for collaboration and knowledge exchange.
11
Benjamin Wulf
Service & Organisational Design, Municipal Government
Ben works at the intersection of service design, organisational design, and municipal government. His central question: what do organisations need to change structurally so that citizen-friendly services become the norm, not the exception?
12
Vanessa Espinosa
Senior Service Designer, ifok GmbH
Vanessa is a Senior Service Designer at ifok GmbH working on public sector innovation and digital transformation projects. She collaborates with ministries, municipalities, and interdisciplinary teams across Germany to create user-centered services.
13
Jeannette Weber
Strategic Service Designer, Philips Amsterdam
Jeannette is a Strategic Service Designer at Philips, Amsterdam. Having worked across disciplines, industries, and sectors, she currently focuses her work and energy on maternal and female health.
14
Kaya Kim
Executive Research Fellow, LG Electronics
Kaya Kim is an Executive Research Fellow at LG Electronics, reporting directly to the CTO, where she leads initiatives at the intersection of AI, robotics, intelligent systems, and next-generation digital experiences. Her career began at SDN in Cologne and has since spanned Volkswagen Group IT in Munich and LG Electronics in Seoul.
15
Mauro Rego
UX Lead, AI & Innovation Research at Google
Mauro Rego is a UX Lead in the AI & Innovation Research department for Platforms & Devices at Google. He develops new features and services for the Google hardware ecosystem and platforms like Chrome and Android. His work translates complex research findings into intuitive products, pushing the boundaries of what is technically and creatively possible with current AI models.
16
Peter Schindlecker
Head of Innovation, ÖBB
Peter Schindlecker is Head of Innovation at ÖBB (Österreichische Bundesbahnen). His work focuses on building integrated innovation and digital capabilities, from venture clienting and AI adoption to new platform-based business models, creating better mobility services and pushing the boundaries of public-sector innovation.
17
Alessandra Molderings-Enriconi
Service Designer, ING Germany & Co-founder SDN NRW
Alessandra is a service designer with over ten years of experience, integrating systems thinking, cross-cultural insight and strategic leadership to drive human-centred change across Europe. She is co-founder of the SDN NRW Chapter and currently works on employee experience at ING Germany.
18
Julia Leihener
Professor & Director M.A. Strategic Design, SRH Berlin
Prof. Julia Leihener is director of the M.A. Strategic Design at the SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences as well as independent innovation consultant, coach and moderator at various institutions like ESCP, Siemens Stiftung or d.school HPI. She co-founded the Creation Center of the Telekom Innovation Laboratories.
19
Marcel Befort
Co-founder, Sensity
Marcel graduated from KISD with a focus on Design Operations and went on to co-found Sensity, bringing a distinct perspective on design and innovation.
20
Lisa Hunger
Design Research, Sensity
Lisa graduated from KISD, specializing in Service Design throughout her BA and MA. She is part of Sensity's Design Research team.
21
Mauricio Manhães
Professor of Service Design, SCAD
Mauricio Manhães, Ph.D., is a Professor of Service Design and the Graduate Program Coordinator for the Master in Business Innovation at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). An early pioneer in integrating AI into design pedagogy, he is the co-author of The Quasi-Creature and the Uncanny Valley of Agency.
Evening program
From 18:00, the yard.
After Closing Remarks at 17:10, the KISD courtyard transforms into a summer gathering for the service design community. An evening to reconnect, celebrate, and simply enjoy each other's company.
What to expect
A relaxed yard party. Music and conversations. Familiar and new faces from across the community. Small and big treats to win in the tombola. Food trucks and a barbecue. Free drinks throughout the evening.
A moment worth raising a glass to
The evening marks more than 30 years of service design at KISD and Birgit Mager's extraordinary contribution to the field. No preparation needed. No dress code. Just come as you are.
We've set up a WhatsApp group so you can self-organize, swap notes, and start the conversation before June 12. Fully community-run. Join if you'd like, skip if it's not your thing.
Service Design Now is an invitation only event with a limited number of seats. If you can no longer make it, please drop us a quick email so we can pass your spot on to someone else from the community.
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