Designing for People Inside and Outside the Classroom: Service Design Proposals for Positive Social Inclusion of Refugees

The scourge of migration associated with refugee status is a societal challenge in contemporary societies. This encourages the development of adequate responses for people welcomed by responsible organizations, to promote full and effective social integration in the society in which they are integrated. In a problem-based learning approach, a partnership was developed with the Municipality of Guimarães, where students of the master’s degree in product and services design develop service design proposals for and with refugees integrated into the Guimarães Acolhe program. Based on participatory approaches, the students assessed the main anxieties and ambitions of the refugees, and developed, evaluated and proposed two services to respond to the questions of language learning and women’s empowerment. This process of learning and interaction with people and real contexts demonstrated the importance of promoting these initiatives both through the learning process and the potential impact of academia on society.