Next Career Step
Understanding where service design professionals see themselves in the next 3-5 years provides valuable insight into the evolution of the field. Is the focus on moving up the ladder, shifting into strategy, or perhaps branching out into entrepreneurship?
To explore this, we asked: "What do you realistically see as the next step in your career path in the next 3-5 years?"
Intended Career Trajectory
The chart below displays the percentage of mentions for the predefined options that respondents could choose from in the survey.
The Diversity of Career Paths
Beyond the standard categories, many service design professionals envision unique trajectories that don't always fit a traditional mold. When selecting "Other" in the survey, respondents shared specific goals ranging from niche expertise to entirely new ventures.
The following list is a collection of these "Other" career paths. We used AI to analyze and group these open-text responses into standardized themes to better illustrate the diversity of aspirations within the community.
Our Methodology
To understand the future career paths of service design professionals, we analyzed responses to the question: "What do you realistically see as the next step in your career path in the next 3-5 years?"
- Quantitative Analysis: We first looked at the distribution of standard career categories selected by respondents.
- Qualitative Refinement: For respondents who selected "Other," we captured their open-ended descriptions.
- AI-Powered Standardizing: We utilized the Gemini 3.0 API to clean and standardize these "Other" responses into a set of secondary themes, allowing us to highlight the diversity of career goals beyond the primary categories.
This approach combines the clarity of standard metrics with the rich detail of individual career stories.