Katie Petrie
She/Her
Director of Business, Development, & Strategy
Service Design Academy
Katie Murrie is Director of Business, Development and Strategy at Service Design Academy (SDA) and a Service Design Network Accredited Master Trainer. With over 15 years’ experience across education, leadership, and business, Katie has played a key role in shaping SDA’s international reputation for accessible, practice led service design learning.
She co created SDA’s Professional Development Award in Service Design and has designed and led large scale learning and transformation programmes with public sector organisations across the UK, including national government, health, and education bodies. She was the first person in Scotland to achieve SDN Master Trainer status and currently serves on the SDN Accreditation Committee, supporting quality and consistency in service design education globally.
Katie has contributed to Touchpoint Journal and co authored Transforming Higher Education Using Human Centred Design. She is passionate about making service design everyone’s business - building confidence, capability, and ethical practice in complex systems worldwide.
Talk
Beyond Boundaries: How Frontline Design Shapes Fairer Futures
What becomes possible when frontline practitioners gain the power and permission to design with the people they support?
This case study demonstrates how service design can enable organisations to move beyond traditional boundaries by redistributing capability to those closest to communities. It shows how everyday design practice can shape the atmosphere of public services, creating experiences rooted in dignity, trust, and agency -while influencing decision‑making at a systemic level. Our audience will leave with practical insights into how design can enable more responsive, resilient services and help shape fairer futures within complex public systems.
Key Takeaways
A practical model for embedding service design with frontline staff working at the intersections of complex public systems.
Lightweight, repeatable design tools that fit everyday practice while generating insight robust enough to influence decisions.
Approaches to redistributing design power ethically, ensuring frontline staff are enabled and protected, not overloaded.
Clear examples of how democratised design influences policy, strategy, and cross system decision making within real funding and governance constraints.
This is a co-presented talk with Kim Anderson