Alongside established figures such as Marc Stickdorn, Rachael Dietkus and Lou Downe, lecturers Alessia Rullo, Mabel Lazzarin and Markel Cormenzana, Business Design student Fer Herrera and Manuela Procopio, Academic Manager at IED Barcelona, took part in the conference as panellists, workshop facilitators and moderators
News
The IED Barcelona community takes part in the conference that brings together the world’s leading figures in Design Management
Date
28 October 2026
As part of its official programme, Barcelona Design Week hosted the international conference “Service Design Disrupted”. Held over two days, on 15 and 16 October, the event brought together world leaders in Design Management to explore the future of design. Alongside established figures such as Marc Stickdorn, Rachael Dietkus and Lou Downe, several members of the IED Barcelona community contributed as panellists, workshop facilitators and moderators.
Lecturer Alessia Rullo delivered a talk entitled “The Islands of Automisation”, which invited service designers to move beyond perfecting isolated systems and start designing the connective tissue: the common thread linking fragmented systems. She also participated in the “In-house Design Leadership” panel, where she explored what it means to lead service design within an organisation, rather than simply deliver it.
Fellow lecturers Mabel Lazzarin and Markel Cormenzana also took part in the conference. Lazzarin facilitated the “New Frontiers of Service Design” workshop, inviting the service design community to reimagine the field’s new frontiers and the emerging possibilities of their practice. Cormenzana delivered the talk “Stay with the trouble”, which used a real-world case study to illustrate how, beyond good research, carefully designed interactions, organisational insight and an understanding of microeconomic and macroeconomic conditions, as well as other key structural factors shaping the profession, can be essential to a pragmatic yet committed design practice.
Meanwhile, Business Design student Fer Herrera participated as a panellist in “Generational Handover”, an engaging discussion about the breakdown in knowledge transfer between generations in a labour market where AI is replacing tasks traditionally assigned to young talent, and the implications this has for education and training.
Finally, Manuela Procopio, Academic Manager at IED Barcelona, moderated the “Future Design Skills” panel, which addressed questions such as: What role do service designers currently play within organisations? What should they invest in to develop their skills? And which skills will be essential in the coming years to remain relevant and make a meaningful impact?, among other topics.
Photography: Rubén Vaquero and Abel Jurado / Barcelona Design Week 2026 (BDW26)
You may be interested in:
