Elevate Your (Service) Design Team's Skills with Tailored In-House Training from SDN Academy

Organizations with design teams face constant pressure to keep skills sharp and stay ahead of evolving customer expectations. Finding the right training that fits your team’s schedule and specific needs can be a challenge. The SDN Academy offers a solution with our flexible, expert-led in-house service design training designed to boost your team’s capabilities and deliver measurable impact.

Why in-house service design training?

Training your design or service design team in-house offers several advantages over public courses or generic online programs:

• Tailored to your team’s needs: When you book an in-house cohort of any of our courses, we can adapt dates and session times to fit your organization’s priorities and calendar.

• Cohort learning: Groups of employees learn together, fostering collaboration and teamwork.

• Cost-effective: Discounts apply when minimum cohort sizes are reached, and a cohort is delivered exclusively for you, making it more affordable than individual public course registrations. If you can't fill an entire cohort, we can offer group discounts on seats within our public courses.

• Access to expert trainers: Our trainers are thought leaders with deep experience in service design, typically holding Master-level Accreditation from the SDN, and seasoned educators.

• Flexible formats: Our remote delivery formats allow teams to participate from anywhere without travel disruption.

  
  

These benefits combine to create a learning experience that is practical, relevant, and immediately applicable to your team’s work, no matter what their current level of service design expertise is.

Popular courses for in-house teams

The SDN Academy offers a broad catalog of courses, but two stand out as favorites for in-house cohorts:

Practitioner Curriculum

This comprehensive introductory service design course leads to Practitioner Accreditation from the SDN. It covers foundational skills such as:

• Setting up service design projects

• Exploration and research

• Customer journey mapping, service blueprinting, ideation, and prototyping

• And more!

  
  

Teams completing this 6-module course gain a solid grounding in service design tools and methods, ready to apply them confidently in their projects.

Masterclasses Series

For teams seeking advanced skills across a range of topics, the Masterclasses Series offers an ideal solution. This 8-week, 8-module course leads to Professional Accreditation from the SDN. Topics include:

• Designing services with AI

• Team leadership and organizational change

• Prototyping and successful implementation

• Systems thinking and sustainability

• Aligning service design with business strategy

• And more!

  
  

This course is ideal for senior design roles or those leading service design initiatives.

Which employees benefit from our courses?

For our two Accreditation courses, we typically see participants with a range of training goals and job titles:

Practitioner Accreditation	Masterclasses Series
Suited for those wanting: Foundational fluency: To acquire a rigorous grounding in the end-to-end service design process, from initial discovery and user research to prototyping and implementation. Career transition: To pivot professionally into service design by building a credible portfolio of methods recognized by the SDN. Methodological rigor: To move beyond intuitive problem-solving toward a structured application of tools like service blueprints, journey mapping, and stakeholder ecosystems. Professional validation: To obtain a formal Accreditation that serves as a quality career benchmark.	Suited for those wanting: Advanced specialization: To master complex, niche domains such as systemic design, service design for sustainability, organizational change or AI-integrated service models. Strategic leadership: To transition from "doing" design to "leading" design, focusing on organizational transformation, design strategy, and stakeholder buy-in. Practice refinement: To bridge the gap between standard methodology and high-level execution. Global networking: To engage in peer-to-peer learning with international experts and senior practitioners, fostering high-level knowledge exchange. Future-proofing: To stay at the forefront of the industry by exploring emerging trends and advanced frameworks that define the next generation of service design.
Course attendees typically include: Entry-level: Career starters and recent graduates . Career switchers: Professionals from marketing, project management, or business analysis looking to re-skill in service design. Junior design practitioners: UX/UI designers, product designers, and researchers aiming to broaden their scope from digital interfaces to service ecosystems. Service delivery staff: Front-line managers and public sector professionals who wish to apply service design thinking to improve the operational efficiency and user experience of their services.	Course attendees typically include: Experienced designers: Mid-level and senior service designers (typically: 2+ years of experience) seeking to deepen their expertise. Design management: Heads of design, design ops leads, and creative directors responsible for managing design teams and design culture. Strategic roles: CX strategists and digital transformation leads who integrate service design into broader business strategies. Consultants and educators: Independent consultants or academic staff looking to update their toolkit with the latest industry-standard advanced practices.

Custom course development

In addition to offering in-house cohorts of our public courses (where the content remains the same, but we adapt the delivery to your needs), we also offer custom-made courses on a wide range of topics:

• Journey management

• Service design and AI

• Service design leadership

• Organizational change and service design

• Advanced prototyping

• Service design for innovation and ventures

• Advanced facilitation techniques

• Systems thinking

• Sustainability

• Psychology and service design

SDN Academy collaborates closely with your organization to understand your goals and challenges. The process typically includes:

1. Needs assessment: Discuss your team’s current skills, project demands, and training objectives.

2. Course selection and customization: Choose from our catalog or request custom course development tailored to your context.

3. Scheduling: Set dates and session times that work best for your team, including both online and in-person formats.

4. Delivery: Experienced trainers lead interactive sessions using top-notch resources and real-world examples.

5. Follow-up: Participants receive certificates, Accreditation (when applicable), and SDN membership benefits.

Benefits beyond training

Participants in all SDN Academy courses gain more than just skills:

• Accreditation: For those who follow one of our Accreditation-granting courses, they earn a professional distinction that is globally recognized and establishes their credentials.

• SDN Membership: Courses typically include Professional Membership with the SDN, giving participants access to the SDN community, the largest global network of service designers, with a wealth of resources, on-line and in-person events, and discounts.

• Prestige: Being part of a non-profit organization established in 2004, the SDN Academy carries a reputation for quality and leadership in service design education.

Our in-house clients

SDN Academy has partnered with organizations of all sizes worldwide. For example:

• We trained a unit of the Australian Government on the value of strategic design in organizations

• 15+ participants of German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom followed our Practitioner Curriculum course

• Accenture consultants in Portugal learned about service design management from our expert trainer

• A multinational bank in Africa trained an entire department on systems thinking thanks to a group-booking of our on-demand course 'Systems Thinking: The Yin and the Yang sides'

• Other clients include: Metro (Germany), NASK (Poland), Interaccess (Ireland), and a university in El Salvador

  
  

Take the next step

If your organization wants to build stronger design capabilities, the SDN Academy’s in-house service design training offers a flexible, expert-led path. Contact us via email to discuss your team’s needs and explore course options.

Contact us: academy@service-design-network.org

Investing in your team’s skills today will pay off in better-designed services, happier customers, and a more confident design workforce.

Group booking discounts

If you are not yet ready for an in-house cohort of one of our courses, or a custom-made course, yet you have several employees or team members with training needs, we also offer group booking discounts on our public courses. This guarantees multiple employees can attend a training together, and you benefit from an attractive discount. Contact us to learn more! academy@service-design-network.org