Service Design and Horizontally-Organized Communities

Service design has significant political and social potential. By creating structures and facilitating relationships between different agents, service design can help them exchange information, self-organize, and unite for collective action. At a time when society is increasingly critical of existing ideological constructs—whether democracy, capitalism, or the nation-state—service design can provide tools for establishing direct dialogue between people beyond these frameworks. Moreover, various communities are already practicing new forms of horizontal interaction, and studying them can benefit the development of both service design and social sciences.

This essay reflects on two main topics. First, it outlines the intersections between service design and horizontally organized communities. To do this, it relies on theoretical research in the fields of design and sociology. The goals of this section are, firstly, to theoretically justify the transfer of service design tools to the social sphere, and secondly, to identify the problems and limitations associated with this approach.

The second part consists of case studies. Its purpose is to show how service design tools can be useful in creating horizontal communities, and to suggest ways to deepen and enhance this integration. Conversely, it also aims to demonstrate how these communities can inspire new directions for the development of service design itself.

In the vocabulary of sociology and human studies, the terms “horizontal” and “vertical” structure are widely used to define two main dimensions of social relations. Vertical structure is associated with hierarchy and power; it is often used to describe relations of oppression and subordination (Martínez, 2018). Horizontal structure, in turn, refers to “social relations between equals” (Martínez, 2018) and implies principles of democracy and consensus.

According to Sitrin (2012, p. 3), horizontalism is “a form of direct decision making that rejects hierarchy and works as an ongoing process.” This is a key point for establishing a connection between service design and horizontalism. Lucy Kimbell (2009) states that service designers perceive service as a “fluid arrangement of human and non-human artefacts rather than a fixed intangible entity.” From this perspective, a service design approach can be applied to horizontalism, as it offers tools to facilitate processes and complex structures.

Moreover, service design and horizontalism intersect significantly in the idea of autonomy. Arturo Escobar (2018) conducted in-depth research on autonomous service design. He claims that “autonomy is the key to the autopoiesis or self-creation of living systems,” and that autonomous design is a powerful tool for achieving such autonomy. At the same time, Gustavo Esteva (1999), a researcher of the Zapatista movement, defines autonomy as the “ability to create the conditions that enable communities to change their norms from within, or the ability to change traditions traditionally.”

Thus, the idea of horizontal communities is closely intertwined with the idea of autonomy. If a community lacks sufficient independence or is unable to make decisions “from within,” it must either submit to external authority or face disintegration. Autonomous design is therefore another important area where service design becomes essential for horizontal communities.

These ideas outline the field of application for service design in horizontally organized communities. Facilitating people’s interaction, autonomous design, and internal decision-making are core competencies of service design that are crucial for horizontalism. The following sections of this essay focus on the theoretical and practical implications of service design for empowering horizontal social structures.

First and foremost, it is important to ask: does every service design intervention lead to increased empowerment and agency of people? In other words, is service design inherently a democratic discipline, or does it have constraints and blind spots?

Designers usually see the design process as a democratic practice itself. Human-centred and services approaches have taught us to see the figure of the designer as an open-minded researcher who helps people build a more honest and sustainable world. In this situation of determinism, criticism of such a perspective becomes crucial as it keeps designers conscious about their approaches and warns them from destructive practices.

In her criticism of colonial approaches in designs, Josina Wink (2022) claims that often design methods are too universal, which in turn leads to directing participants (and designers as well) toward a “predefined understanding of what is good”. Design is not equal to co-design. Difference between them sometimes could be a difference between democracy and authoritarianism — especially if the designer is biased about the outcome of the research.

The concept of direct democracy, which implies direct participation of people in the process, lays at the basis of horizontal movements. It is closely intertwined with anti-colonial movements in design: both of them tend to criticize accepted dogmas and question the bases and prerequisites of democracy and design.

Even the neoliberal ideology may use the language of rights to control and limit dissent. For instance, Shannon Speed (2005) notices that the individual rights established in the Mexican Constitution were above collective indigenous rights “in order to limit indigenous people’s pursuit of autonomy”.

This leads to an important theoretical insight. If we view rights and agency as resources, we remain trapped in the problem of their origin. In other words, if someone is “empowered,” there is always another party who granted that power — and therefore can also revoke it. To overcome this paradigm, we should adopt a service design perspective that treats power not as a static resource but as a process or practice. Power emerges whenever people take action and dissipates as soon as the action ends.

In the service design field it was formulated by Sabine Junginger and Daniela Sangiorgi (2009): “Service Designers move therefore from the auspicated role of ‘directors’ of prescriptive service performances to the one of ‘enabler’, ‘facilitator’ and ‘connector’ for certain behaviours and configurations to emerge”. Thus, a designer is not the source of power or legitimacy but rather the one who activates and facilitates action.

In the open letter to the design community, “Stand Up for Democracy,” Ezio Manzini and Victor Margolin (2017) describe four convergences between democracy and design. Among these, they highlight “design as democracy,” defined as “the practice of participatory design so that diverse actors can shape our present and future worlds in fair and inclusive ways.” This reflects a common understanding of democracy within service design: rather than applying universal patterns and tools to various situations, design should address the real needs of users. In this sense, design must originate within the community and result from its autonomous activity, rather than being imposed as an external strategy.

To analyze how service design approaches can support the creation and empowerment of horizontally organized communities, this work uses two case studies. The first—the Zapatista and Communalidad movements in South America—embodies a model of intentional design for horizontally organized communities. The second, the refugee camps in the Sahara, represents a community formed spontaneously. However, it still exhibits service design approaches as a manifestation of individuals’ natural inclination toward social constructivism.

The Zapatista movement, led by the EZLN, began in 1994 as an indigenous uprising in Chiapas against neoliberalism and state oppression. Rather than seeking state power, the Zapatistas promote radical democracy, autonomy, and grassroots self-governance. Scholars like Gustavo Esteva (1999) view them as redefining democracy through community-based, participatory politics rooted in cultural diversity and autonomy.

The Zapatistas embody radical democracy, where power remains with the people and is exercised directly, rather than being delegated to representatives or institutions. In this sense, decision-making in these communities resembles service design practices, which are “intended to make collective alignment, create transparent conversation, and facilitate effective and inclusive decision-making processes” (Lee et al., 2023).

Sometimes it seems that the Zapatistas and other horizontal movements unintentionally invent and develop service design principles. For instance, “Mandar obedeciendo,” or “to rule by obeying,” is a central principle in Zapatista political philosophy and practice. It regards the position of authority not as a privilege, but as a “cargo, a burden, a service” (Esteva, 1999).

Within this structure, leadership operates by listening, consulting, and obeying. A leader in the Zapatista structure, in a sense, functions as a designer. This means that service design tools such as co-design sessions, interviews, and discussions could be crucial for a leader in horizontalism, as they help base decisions on the real needs of the people and, therefore, improve society.

Another significant trait of Zapatismo is autonomy, which is both a goal and a practice for indigenous communities. It entails self-governance, respect for traditional customs, and refusal to submit to the state. In this respect, Zapatismo could contribute to the service design discipline. As Arturo Escobar (2018) states, “the autonomous design framework may be considered a Latin American contribution to the transnational conversation on design.”

Finally, the Zapatistas challenge the nation-state model by building a new political configuration where state power is subordinate to people’s power. Since this approach denies social progress through democratic institutions, other drivers of internal change are necessary. Here, service design can also be instrumental as a tool for “innovation from within” by establishing dialogue and fostering an active role for all participants in the system (Junginger & Sangiorgi, 2009).

Since the Zapatista movement fights against ideological constructs such as neoliberalism and representative democracy, its structure is firmly based on ideological premises. However, there are communities whose structures arose spontaneously and yet embody the approaches and methods of service design. This allows us to view design as a natural human need, as “every community practices the design of itself” (Escobar, 2018).

One such example is the Sahrawi Refugee Camps in the Sahara Desert. These camps, located in the Tindouf region of southwestern Algeria, were established in 1975 following Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled to Algeria, where they were granted land to build camps. Over time, these camps developed into self-governed, semi-permanent communities with their own political, educational, and health institutions, operating under the framework of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a state-in-exile.

An important feature of the camps is the distribution of gender roles. From the very beginning, women were responsible for “the construction of the camp and the state in exile, while also taking care of education, health, crafts, and reproductive labor” (Lafontaine Carboni, 2023). From a design perspective, gender roles as well as the rejection of the concept of a state show the extent to which tradition is a product of design. What is considered a cultural norm and a natural state in other societies is, in fact, nothing more than a product of social design. Thus, the examples of the Sahrawi and Zapatista camps are useful for service design because they demonstrate how flexibility in the construction of norms can lead to greater equality and resilience in society.

In addition to social structure, it is extremely important how the Sahrawis were able to design structures of collective memory. For them, the way to remember and preserve traditions was not through stories or records, but through the preservation of bodily practices. For example, even if a man was not present in the tent, there was still space for his belongings — the very repetition of the ritual became a way of preserving identity.

In a situation of severe resource constraints, residents designed new practices for preserving memory and traditions. This resembles the principles of critical design, which reveal hidden ideologies and values in design and seek to develop new patterns.

Another contribution of the Sahrawi Refugee Camps to design lies in architecture and urbanism. The Sahrawis developed their own architectural typologies and urban structures that responded to very contradictory challenges and implemented principles of tactical urbanism. Architects and designers agree that research on these structures may “help guarantee better living conditions, albeit temporary, and promote a more sustainable approach according to social, economic, and environmental conditions” (Roccaro, 2023).

It is important to note that life in the Sahrawi camps is not a conscious choice of the population. The protracted refugee situation is a consequence of both European colonialism (the camps emerged as a result of Spain's withdrawal from its African colonies) and ongoing policies of Western countries that have adopted the camp as a "durable solution" (Martín, 2017). Despite the refugees’ successes, design in this case is more a tool for survival than a progressive activity aimed at social innovation.