What’s a good book or reference on Service Design?

Updated: In collaboration with the University of Auckland Business School, get 10% off the course fees for Service Design Thinking at checkout by using this code before the end of 2018: GRAEME10

This is part 3 of a follow up on the Service Design Thinking short course I did through the University of Auckland‘s executive education programme recently.

As I’ve read a bit more about Service Design and bought a bunch of books, there are a couple that really stand out. This is one of above. You can order through the website but also they have a massive PDF file of practical stuff that they are giving away for free. You have to submit your email to get this.

Here are my notes from the first part of this book looking at some basic principles for service design thinking. And here’s a question to consider, if you’re reading:

• How do these principles and values align with your own personal, organisational or other kaupapa?

Service Design should be…

1. Human-centred.
   • Consider the experience of all the people affected by the service. This requires empathy, listening, and relationship.
   • And we need to agree on a common language… it’s the language of the service user.
2. Collaborative.
   • Stakeholders of various backgrounds and functions should be actively engaged in the service design process.
   • Who are the customer groups, service providers, stakeholders?
   • Who are the customers in education? How do we even define “customer”?
   • A customer is someone who pays. But in service design, a customer is someone who is transformed by the service.
3. Iterative.
   • Service design is an exploratory, adaptive, and experimental approach, iterating toward implementation.
4. Sequential.
   • A service should be visualised and orchestrated as a sequence of interrelated actions. The best way to do this is to imagine the service as a movie. It takes place over time and has a rhythm. Some parts are slow. Others are fast. Too slow = bored. Too fast = stressed.
   • Storyboarding can help with this.
   • Consider: Pre-service, service, post service.
5. Real.
   • Needs should be researched in reality, ideas prototyped in reality, and intangible values evidenced  as physical or digital reality.
   • This includes how to make the intangible tangible. E.g Hotel backstage services.
6. Holistic.
   • Services should sustainable and address the needs of all stakeholders through the entire service and across the business.
   • Cf Te Whare Tapawha for an example of holistic model from Te Ao Māori.
   • Services are intangible, but they take place in a physical environment, using physical artefacts and [usually] generate some form of physical outcome.
   • Also consider alternative customer journeys, touchpoints, approaches.

Any thoughts…?