Courses taught

MBA elective in Designing Better Futures.
MBA Entrepreneurship Project (idea generation and visualisation workshops).

Expertise

Service design.
Design-led innovation.
Interdisciplinary collaboration.
Art practice as enquiry.

Overview

Lucy is a designer, educator and researcher with expertise in design thinking and service design. Now associate fellow at the school, Lucy was previously on the faculty for five years as Clark Fellow for Design Leadership.

She brings to the school a background in art and design practice, particularly the emerging field of service design, complemented by academic research. Since 2005, she has taught an MBA elective at Said using approaches from design and design management, one of few such courses in management schools. This elective offers students unique opportunities to explore design-led innovation through hands-on workshops and collaborations with designers, particularly in relation to services. Lucy’s research focuses on the intersections between management and organisation theory and knowledge about art and design practices.

Lucy’s professional practice includes consultancy for organizations as diverse as Vodafone, the BBC, Deutsche Bank, cultural venue Rich Mix, and many others. More recently she was head of social design at The Young Foundation, a social innovation intermediary, developing its design capability to support its work with clients and ventures. 

Originally educated in Engineering Design and Appropriate Technology at the University of Warwick, she later took an MA in Computing in Art and Design in the Centre for Electronic Arts at Middlesex University and is finishing a PhD in Design at Lancaster University. Lucy has worked as a designer, manager, design manager, artist, mental health non-profit fundraiser, print and radio journalist, design tutor, editor, night club promoter and volunteer. She has lived and worked in Sudan (one year), Barcelona, Spain (one year), Warsaw, Poland (two years) and now lives in London.

Research interests

As a researcher Lucy aims to develop a better understanding of the role of design in organisations and in the context of major collective challenges such as climate change. She has a particular focus on trying to describe what makes designers’ ways of working distinctive, and how design-based approaches can be used in the design of services. Theoretically Lucy draws on design research, participatory design and science and technology studies.

Lucy’s contributions include papers in peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and book chapters. She is a regular keynote speaker including the Association of Societies of Design Research (2011), Design Management Institute (2011), Service Design Network (2010) and Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (2008). Lucy was Principal Investigator on an AHRC-EPSRC grant on Designing for the 21st Century award that brought together service design professionals, science enterprises offering services, and 20 academics from a range of fields.

Teaching

Lucy’s MBA elective in Designing Better Futures (previously Design Leadership) has been running at the school since 2006. This elective provides a unique opportunity for students to explore design and its role in organisations including in new product/service development and innovation. There is a strong focus on what some people call 'design thinking' and the design of user experiences and services. The elective is taught partly through hands-on exploration of design methods and approaches, complemented by readings, cases, class discussion and guest speakers. In order to demystify the creative process, the elective gives students an opportunity to explore key practices including collaborative workshops with design students in the context of a real project. Students often say this class helps them synthesize much of the other learning they experience on the MBA. For more about this elective please see Lucy’s teaching blog at http://designingbetterfutures.wordpress.com.

In addition Lucy contributes to the MBA elective in Design for Innovation and Change organised by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

Key publications include

Kimbell, L. (forthcoming 2013) The Object Fights Back: An interview with Graham Harman, Design and Culture

Kimbell, L. (2012) Rethinking Design Thinking: Part 2, Design and Culture, 4(2): 129-148

Kimbell, L. (2011) Rethinking Design Thinking: Part 1, Design and Culture, 3(3): 285-306

Kimbell, L. (2011) Designing for Service as One Way of Designing Services, International Journal of Design, 5(2)

Kimbell, L. (2011) An Aesthetic Inquiry into Organizing Some Rats and Some People, Tamara: Journal for Critical Organizational Inquiry, 9(3-4): 77-92

Kimbell, L. (2011) ‘Manifesto for the M(B)A in Designing Better Futures’, in Cooper, R. Junginger, S. and Lockwood, T. (eds) The Handbook of Design Management, Oxford: Berg.

Blyth, S. and Kimbell, L. (2011) Design Thinking and the Big Society. London: Actant and Taylor Haig.

Miller, D., Rudnick, L., Kimbell, L. and Philipsen, G. (2010) Strategic Design and Public Policy. Conference report. Glen Cove, NY.

Kimbell, L. (2009) ‘The Turn to Service Design’ in Julier, G. and Moor, L., (eds) Design and Creativity: Policy, Management and Practice, Oxford: Berg.

Kimbell, L. and Seidel, Victor P. (2008) (eds) Designing for Services – Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Proceedings from the Exploratory Project on Designing for Services in Science and Technology-based Enterprises. Oxford: Saïd Business School.

Kimbell, L. (2004) (ed) New Media Art: Practice and Context in the UK 1994-2004. Arts Council England/Cornerhouse Publications.

Kimbell, L. (2002) Audit. London: Bookworks.

Videos of recent talks

Kimbell, L. (2012) Design's new publics. University of the Arts DESIS Public and Collaborative Series, Central St Martins, London

Kimbell, L. (2011) Why service design is both more and less than it seems. International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR), Delft, (keynote)

Kimbell, L. (2010) Service design at a crossroads. Design Network Conference, Berlin (keynote speaker).

For an up to date list of recent publications please visit Lucy’s personal website http://www.lucykimbell.com.