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 Lucy Kimbell 

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 researcher, educator and design/management consultant working with several organizations. As associate of TaylorHaig, she helps service organizations transform so they can innovate and improve their service offerings. She brings to the school a background in art and design practice, particularly the emerging field of service design. 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, which offers students opportunities to explore design-led innovation through hands-on workshops and collaborations with designers, particularly in relation to service innovation. Lucy’s research focuses on the intersections between management and organisation theory and knowledge about art and design practices. She is a regular keynote speaker at design and design management conferences.

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. She has worked as a designer, manager, design manager, artist, innovation consultant, 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) and Warsaw, Poland (two years). She is completing a PhD in design at Lancaster University.

Research interests

Lucy Kimbell's research and teaching is sparked by conversations and engagements with a wide range of people across disciplinary boundaries including social scientists, artists, software programmers, product designers, scientists, architects, educators and policymakers. She has an ongoing dialogue with scholars within Science and Technology Studies (STS) within the school and internationally.

Current projects

New tools for Design for Service.
Designing better futures.
Designing for services in science and technology-based enterprises (funded by Designing for the 21st Century initiative of the AHRC and EPSRC).
Designing services and designing service users.

Books and Publications:


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

Hodby, A., Kimbell, L. and Wakeford, N. (2008) Imagining Business. Exhibition catalogue

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

Kimbell, L (2002) Audit, Book Works, London

Book chapters:

Kimbell, L. ‘Manifesto for the M(B)A in Designing Better Futures’ in Cooper,R. Junginger, S. and Lockwood, T. (eds.) The Handbook of Design Management, Berg http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff//Kimbell_ManifestoM%28B%29A_2010.pdf

Kimbell, L (forthcoming), 'From novelty to routine: Services in science and technology-based Enterprises' in Meroni, A and Sangiorgi, D (editors), 'Design for Services', Gower publishing

Kimbell, L (2009) 'The Turn to Service Design' in Julier, G and Moor, L, 'Design and Creativity: Policy, Management and Practice', Berg http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/ServiceDesignKimbell_final.pdf

Kimbell,  L (2005), 'If networked art is the answer what is the question?' in Corby, T(ed) Network Art, Routledge

Barry, A and Kimbell, L (2005) 'Pindices' in Latour, B and Weibel, P (eds) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy , MIT Press, 2005

Conferences:

‘Designing future practices’. Making/Crafting/Designing: Design theory symposium. Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (invited speaker) 2011

‘Service design at a crossroads’. Service Design Network conference, Berlin (keynote speaker) 2010, http://designleadership.blogspot.com/2010/10/service-design-at-crossroads.html

Make yourself public!’ Mediating Practices: Design, Politics and their Publics symposium. Goldsmiths College (invited speaker), 2010

Strategic Design and Public Policy conference. United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Glen Cove, New York. Co-organizer, 2010

From user-centred design to designing for service’ Design Management Institute conference, London (keynote speaker), 2010,  http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/DMI2010_kimbell_draft.pdf

Kimbell, L. ‘One Night with Rats in the Service of Art’. European Social Studies of Science annual conference, Trento, track on design, STS and performativity

Kimbell, L., (2009), Design-as-Practice and Designs-in-Practice, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change Conference, Manchester, 2009. Track on the design and its objects. (track co-organizer with Nina Wakeford and Laurene Vaughan) http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/CRESC_Kimbell_v3.pdf

Kimbell, L. (2009) ‘Service-dominant logic and design for service’. Paper given at Service Design Network conference, Madeira, Portugal, October 2009. Published in Touchpoint, 1(3), January 2010, pp. 24-25.

Seidel, V. and Kimbell, L. (2009) ‘The Oxford Study on Designing for Services’, PDW session on Design-Driven Innovation, Academy of Management, Chicago (delivered by Victor Seidel)

Kimbell, L., Design Practices in Design Thinking, European Academy of Management, Liverpool, (2009)

Kimbell, L. (2009) ‘Insights from service design practice’. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Aberdeen, Scotland, April 2009, pp. 249-254

Kimbell, L (2008) Organizing design in service design practice, EIASM Imagining Business workshop, Oxford

‘Reassembling the visual’. Kimbell, L. (2008) Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, Copenhagen (keynote speaker). Published in proceedings. http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/EPIC_kimbell.pdf

Kimbell, L. (2007) ‘Spaces for tolerating ambiguity in organizations’. European Group for Organisation Studies (EGOS), Vienna

Kimbell, L. ‘Wicked problems and the tolerance of ambiguity in organizations.’ International Conference on Design Principles and Practices, London, (2007)

Kimbell, L (2006) 'Design Leads Us Where Exactly? Leading by Design at Rich Mix, a New Cultural Venture in London', Wonderground: Design Research Conference, Lisbon

New, S. and Kimbell, L. (2006). ‘On the Anonymity and Invisibility of Process Design.’ Conference of the European Operations Management Association, Glasgow

Selected exhibitions and events:


'Scalar Interferences' (2009) within the Scalography conference organised by InSIS, Said Business School, July 2009

'Imagining Business', (2008) an exhibition to accompany the first workshop on Imagining Business: Reflecting on the visual power of management, organising, and governing practices held at SBS, June 2008. Exhibition  organised by Lucy Kimbell, Nina Wakeford and Alex Hodby. Artists and designers in the show included Chris Evans, Lucy Kimbell, livework, Wolff Olins, Nina Wakeford and Carey Young.

'Pindices: Personal Political Indices', (2005-) a collaboration with sociologist Andrew Barry (OUCE; then director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths College) concerned with how people understand political and citizenship activity, resulting in an exhibit and website for Making Things Public curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, March-October 2005, and also at London Gallery West, University of Westminster, November 2005-January 2006

'Physical Bar Charts', (2005-) a participative sculptural project for Day to Day Data, a group exhibition at Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, July-Aug 2005, and Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, September-October 2005, and Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London, March 2006, and Imagining Business, Oxford, 2008 

'WorldPowerLeague', (2004) a web tool that visualises perceptions and hopes about power relations. Designed with Barby Asante, George Grinsted and Rachel Collinson. Runner up in the New Statesman New Media Awards 2008. Further developed by Futurelab. http://www.powerleague.org.uk/

'Aurabox' (2005), a small box whose aura switches on and off randomly, exhibitied in the group show Product and Vision, curated by Henrik Schrat and Mari Brellochs, Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin, which brought together over 30 artists concerned with aesthetic play in and about organisations

'Free Evaluation Service', service/performance and publication, included in the group exhibition What Business Are You In? at The Contemporary, Atlanta, Georgia, January 2005

'Making a Difference at the University of Plymouth', an audio installation and measuring system installed in a university building, October 2004  http://x2.i-dat.org/~lk/

Some of these projects were supported by a two-year Arts and Humanities Research Council practice-based research fellowship at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

Films

Available on Vimeo

2009 - ‘One Night with Rats in the Service of Art’ Dir L.Kimbell. Dur 7:47
2008 - ‘What Do Service Designers Do?’ Dir L.Kimbell. Dur 7:16

 

CD-ROMs:


Kimbell, L (2002) (ed) Ways of Working: Placing Artists in Business Contexts, Arts Council England, CD-ROM

Contact Details

Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford
OX1 1HP
UK

Lucy.Kimbell@sbs.ox.ac.uk 

 

Twitter @lixindex