Meet Kseniya a Service Designer prototyping phygital grave tombs for the military cemetery in Ukraine
What type of Service Designer are you?
I'm Kseniya Marchenko, a Service Designer exploring public-private and non-government partnerships for innovative cooperation. My areas of interest are the future of planned as a place to live, phygital touchpoints in healthcare, public urban places, entertainment, and immersive media worldwide. I like to use a speculative design attitude to hold the attention of potential service design interventions.
Before Service Design, in what fields were you active?
I was born in Ukraine and have been living in Switzerland since 2021. My first Master's was in Journalism (2012), which I practised on TV and digital media as an author and media manager. It strongly affected my ability to read behaviours and pains and understand people's needs better and how they discover what they wish.
My work in documentary directing and photographing, alongside my studies at The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2017), brought me to the international artistic, photo and film stage for some time. This period was a great experience that allowed me to work in cross-cultural teams in Germany, Austria, and Poland.
We often do Service Design without having the term. What's an example of early Service Design work from your past career?
My focus was always on vulnerable groups of people and taboo topics. In 2019, I joined the core artistic team of the innovative Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in a leading position for documentary and content projects. The Memorial was the first example of a private-public cooperation to transform the urban place of forgetfulness into a place of memory.
With multidisciplinary, international teams, we created tangible architectural, educational, urban, and cultural impacts by using tangible transformations in the areas.
What are you doing now?
In 2021, I decided to go into a career shift and chose the Service Design program at HSLU, which summed up my professional experience into new competencies.
Alongside my Master studies, I'm still working at an international media institution to support fact-based journalism in digital times of bubbling and disinformation.
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine, we launched the evacuation service and filmed the process. Producer of Oscar shortlisted documentary "In the Rearview" (2023).
I am currently working on prototypes of phygital grave tombs for the military cemetery in Ukraine.
You're living in Zürich, Switzerland, so what's your take on Service Design in Switzerland?
Service Design in Switzerland is invisible and very human.
It's invisible as it's strongly connected to tech, science, pharma and other industrial pleasures.
On the other hand, it's very human, as people doing service and service design work appreciate the importance of human relations in their role.
What's next for you?
I want to further develop my competencies as a service designer by working in new fields with a group of designers and teams open to unconventional insights and solutions.
Where can people get in touch with you?
People can reach out and discover my profile on Linkedin.
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