Service design for Journey in Italy

Design is a rapidly developing discipline. It deals with ever-changing “project objects”. Not only traditional ones, such as products, graphics, interiors, but also other areas such as, in this specific case, services. Service design is the most appropriate theoretical and practical area for the “Journey in Italy” initiative. Service design puts the user at the center of the tourist experience. Trying to understand their material needs but also their less explicit requests: emotions, the need to learn, the request for authenticity, the relationship with the local environment, with people, with the history and tradition of that context. Italian design has developed a significant reputation in the world linked to aspects that we could call specific to everyone's life. It is a lifeware design (a term that indicates everything that is in everyday life: food, mobility, home, clothes) and also includes all those moments that make each person's existence meaningful, such as that moment of happiness that is associated with the discovery of a place, the taste of a specific food, the pleasure of conversation and comparison with those who live in that place.

The design of services starts from the person, who is not simply a bearer of interests - a sort of "box" of needs for the consumption of free time - but is himself a bearer of capabilities. The design of the tourist experience cannot ignore this dimension: considering people not as passive actors of interest but as active protagonists in the sustainable use of places that are often delicate, fragile, yet worthy of an enhancement capable of making them accessible and, at the same time, protected.

Francesco Zurlo, May 2023