Professional Certificate in Service Design 2025

Gain a QQI Certificate in Service Design in just 6 weeks!

Gain invaluable experience, learn from experts and build your future career with an industry-leading Professional Certificate in Service Design!

Design Skillnet is excited to announce an exciting collaboration with NCAD’s Creative Futures Academy! We are delighted to announce an exciting collaboration between Creative Futures Academy at NCAD and Design Skillnet on the co-creation of a new ‘Professional Certificate in Service Design’.

The Service Design programme seeks to empower students from fields such as design, business, sociology, systems thinking, education, banking, technology and the public sector to shape the services of the future through design thinking and doing.

Applications to be opened shortly via CFA@NCAD

Content

Service designers craft solutions for intricate systemic and societal challenges, crafting experiences tailored to meet the diverse needs of multiple users and stakeholders. Service Design is a new and rapidly expanding discipline.

This certificate in Service Design aims to improve awareness of the issues that determine the usability of a designed service through the lenses of People, Data and Systems. Learners will analyse how Service Design has evolved, and establish where the current ‘state of the art’ lies in relation to their own area of interest within the discipline.

Students will be introduced to the fundamental principles and processes of the discipline, including Human Centred Design, enabling them to integrate Service Design practices in their own work outside the course.

Industry speakers will address topics and challenges faced by service design practitioners in the real world, such as integrating Service Design within organisations, operating within constraints, and identifying cutting edge approaches and opportunities within Service Design.

Our Professional Certificate equips students with the core principles of Service Design, offering both theoretical insights and practical experience with service design methodologies and tools to excel in their future careers.

Aim: 

• Introduce fundamental principles, methods, skills, and theories of service design
• Cover key aspects of professional practice, including historical, theoretical, cultural, and professional contexts
• Present various design methodologies and techniques for professional development, presentation, and documentation

What you will learn:

The programme will help students to:

• Understand and apply the principles and methodologies of Service Design, including user-centred design, customer journey mapping, and persona development.
• Gain proficiency in the tools and techniques needed to excel within the Service Design industry that will allow students to analyse, prototype, and iterate on services for optimal user experiences.
• Develop the understanding and empathy to help craft experiences tailored to meet the diverse needs of multiple users and stakeholders in various industries
• Build effective communication and collaboration skills to work with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and clients.

Who is it for?

The programme seeks to empower students from fields such as design, business, sociology, systems thinking, education, banking, technology and the public sector to shape the services of the future through design thinking and doing.

• Recent BA graduate
• Early career practitioner
• Early-mid career professional with a background or an interest in design
• Mature, experienced independent practitioner, for opportunity for development.
• Practitioner looking for a new direction.
• Mid-career professional (non-practitioner) working in project management, public sector, business etc., interested in the social impact that design can have

Future Careers

NCAD Service Design graduates have gone on to secure positions within the public and private sectors in the fields of consultancy, healthcare, innovation, and information technology. Graduates are well placed to take up employment in the following roles: Service Design, UX, Experience Design, CX and Strategic Design.

The programme actively facilitates mobility within the college and across Creative Futures Academy and provides articulation into a variety of postgraduate programmes and career pathways.

Schedule

The Professional Certificate in Service Design Programme will begin on April 2025.

Duration: 6 Weeks

Application closing date: TBC

6 weeks, 50% online and 50% in person

This Professional Certificate in Service Design will be delivered across 6 weeks (TBC April – TBC May), at a rate of 5 credits.

This course will require 6 x 3-hour weekly sessions, held on Wednesday mornings starting on April TBC until May TBC.

The programme will be delivered in a blended format – this is to afford the student cohort the convenience of online learning, and the opportunity to also connect and collaborate in person.

Three of the weeks will be online, Three will be face-to-face.

Wednesday mornings (9.30-12.30) | April TBC – TBC
Apr TBC – in person
Apr TBC – online
Mar TBC – in person
May TBC – online
May TBC – online
May TBC – in person

Team

Jennifer Groarke

Jennifer Groarke works as a lecturer in both Interaction and Product Design at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

“I am interested in people, technology and design! Throughout my career I have designed a number of products from tables and lamps, to websites, mobile apps and chatbots!”

Joanna Crawley

Joanna Crawley will answer any questions relating to your application. crawleyj@ncad.ie

Visiting industry speakers will include:

Anne Dhir, Lead Creative Strategist, Sparck

Aidan O’Boyle, Principle Service Designer, Genomics England

Assessment

Fees

Design Skillnet is delighted to collaborate with NCAD’s Creative Future Academy to offer a special partnership rate for this programme.

Design Skillnet Subsidy

This Certificate has been co-created in partnership between Design Skillnet and CFA@NCAD. Co-funding of 34% of the programme fee (€205)* is available via Design Skillnet to successful, eligible applicants*.

Co-funding of 34% of the Course fee is available via Design Skillnet for up to 8 places in this programme.

Pricing:

Non-Members: €TBC

Design Skillnet Co-Funded Rate: €TBC*

*To be eligible for this co-funding you must be (a) successful in your application via NCAD and (b) be a member of IDI, IAPI, ICAD, 100 Archive working in the private or commercial semi-state sector and based in the Republic of Ireland.

Not a member? Email info@idi-design.ie to find out how to join or visit our web page on how to become a member and avail of the subsidies.

If you have graduated within the past 3 years you may be eligible for graduate membership at the special graduate price of €30.Standard/Full (non-graduate) membership of IDI costs €197 per annum plus a one-off €50 application fee.

Application

To open via CFA