Lusofonia
Last week we published an article, in which we shared that our focus for 2020 would be on nurturing and building the Portuguese Service Design Community. To make that happen, we have a set of projects in place, but there is one dearest to our hearts: Lusofonia.
Lusofonia is the Portuguese word that stands for “Portuguese-speaking”. If curious about its origin, the word itself is derived from the name of the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, which covered most of modern-day Portugal. Today, though, Lusitania expands beyond Portuguese borders and includes all the Portuguese-speaking communities spread around the world, and this is what our project, Lusofonia is about.
Lusofonia is a wide-open door to all the Portuguese-speaking Service Designers living overseas.
An open door for them to connect with the Service Design community in Portugal and share their ideas, projects, lessons learned on how it is to work with a different culture and, also, and more importantly, an opportunity to learn from and with peers.
But who is Lusofonia?
Lusofonia is made, for now, of 27 peers distributed all around the world. We’ll get to there in more detail in the fact and figures section :)
We say for now because we keep receiving responses to the survey we launched and shared on our social media channels weeks ago. For the record, we’ll keep it open for the time being, as we want to make sure the door stays open :).
If you are curious who they are, stay put, because you will get the chance to meet them all!
In the interviews that followed the survey, we could get to know them a bit better, and also their commitment to sharing their story and lessons learned with you!
One Article at a Time
You will read stories of peers that will share their path towards Service Design. This is particularly interesting when their backgrounds fall in other design flavors, such as Product Design, Fashion Design or User Experience Design.
Another interesting topic that many will cover is culture and what challenges culture has brought to the working table when leading a Service Design project in Japan, or in China, or in Germany compared to Brazil, for instance.
Now, on the practical side of things, you will also get many hints if you are wondering what it is like to move to a different country to work as a Service Designer. They will tell you the must-haves to include in your suitcase before you pack your things.
Cool, right?
If you are as excited as we are, please, make sure you don’t miss a thing. We promise you that Lusofonia will be a fantastic read for these days!!
Next Week… Miguel Guerra
Next week we will publish the first article written by Miguel Guerra, a Portuguese Service Designer living in Eindhoven that transitioned to Service Design early in his career as Product Designer.
He will speak about that, what Service Design is for him, some cool projects and many, many more things.
In the meantime, here are some facts and figures about Lusofonia, a door that we opened to the world and, in doing so, we realized that the door opened up to us as well, as we got to meet amazing people :)
Lusofonia, Facts & Figures
Lusofonia, for now, is made of 27 people that are originally from two countries: Brazil, 59%, and Portugal, 41%. Interestingly, one person from Canada said in the survey that she feels Portuguese because her parents are from Portugal. Hence, we included her in the Portuguese facts :). Check out the dynamic map below.
They seem to feel home: a great majority have been living in their current cities of residence for over five years.
In terms of what they do for work, a significant majority, 70%, are full-time Service Designers, most of them as employees. This subset has seniority of three or more years, which is excellent. The 30% left either do some projects where they apply SD concepts or would like to transition to this field.
A great majority, 59%, don’t know if in their city of residence there is a Portuguese-speaking Service Design community. The 41% left, know some peers, but they still don’t know if they have established a Portuguese-speaking SD community.
Their reaction to the mission behind this project, Lusofonia, has been of excitement. They really want to connect with Portuguese-speaking peers. The main benefits for them to create a Portuguese-speaking community connected to SDN Portugal at their cities of residence are:
- Sharing knowledge and meet peers and learn from their paths towards Service Design, both with 24,1%.
- Grow their existing network,20,7%
- Having access to resources and finding ways to “go back home”, 12,1% each.
- Finally, with 3.4% each, not to feel alone and other reasons.
Cool facts right?
If you are as excited as we are, please, make sure you don’t miss a thing. We promise you that Lusofonia will be a fantastic read for these days!!
In the meantime, remember that you can connect with us at any of the following social media channels: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or slack, our channel is #chapter-Portugal.
