Thanks to the advocacy of the Design Institute of Australia (DIA), strategic designers and service designers will be formally recognised as distinct professions in Australia’s official occupational classification system, marking a significant milestone for the evolution of the country’s design industry.

Following the DIA’s behind the scenes work, the Australian classification system used for the national Census will include the occupations service designer and strategic designer from 11 August 2026. The change is expected to provide greater visibility for a rapidly growing area of practice and generate more accurate data on the profession’s contribution to Australia’s economy and public life.

For practitioners, the recognition is more than symbolic. It acknowledges disciplines that increasingly shape how people interact with complex systems, from healthcare and transport to banking, education and government services.

Dr Marius Foley, program manager of the Master of Design Futures at RMIT, says the new classifications reflect the growing influence of designers working beyond traditional product and spatial outcomes.

“Practitioners will be able to identify formally as a service designer or design strategist in the Australian Census, a positive step in recognising the important work of these practitioners,” he says.

Service design has become an essential discipline in improving experiences across both public and private sectors. Designers in the field work to understand the needs of users while mapping the often-invisible systems that underpin service delivery, helping organisations create more intuitive, efficient and trusted experiences.

Strategic designers, meanwhile, apply design thinking to long-term planning, using foresight, scenario-building and speculative methodologies to help organisations navigate uncertainty and shape future outcomes.

Updated classifications

The updated classifications include broader descriptors that better define the work undertaken within each discipline. Service designers are recognised for developing service journeys and service blueprints that align customer-facing experiences with operational systems, while strategic designers are identified through their use of future-focused design methods to inform present-day decision making.

According to Foley, the recognition follows more than a decade of observing the emergence of strategic and service design across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

“We have tracked the emergence of strategic and service design in Australia and the region for over a decade, with a particular interest in sustaining ethical practice within this increasingly consequential field,” he says.

The inclusion of both professions in Census data is also expected to strengthen the sector’s ability to demonstrate its impact. Reliable occupational data can help inform policy, education, workforce planning and investment, while providing clearer evidence of design’s role across government, business, cultural institutions and the innovation economy.

“The resulting data from the Census will help position these practices as leading contributors to transformative design across government, corporate, not-for-profit, cultural and innovation sectors,” Foley says.

As the design profession continues to expand beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, the recognition of strategic and service design signals an important acknowledgement of design’s growing role in addressing complex social, organisational and systemic challenges.

Top image: Tourbox, Unsplash.