Bad Services: How to fix services that don't work

by Lou Downe

Bad services waste time, cost money and can even ruin lives. Why, despite advances in technology, are most services getting worse rather than better?

From the author of the bestselling book Good Services, Bad Services untangles why, despite our best efforts, organisations struggle to deliver services that work. This book will help you see the universal challenges we all face when delivering good services. 

You'll learn how to identify the root cause of these issues and build simple, straightforward ways to solve them, with or without buy-in. Whether you're a designer or a change-maker, this book offers clear and straightforward steps to overcome the barriers to good service delivery.

Good Services brought us the 15 principles of Good Service Design that have been universally recognised as an international standard for the service design industry. Bad Services brings you the 5 Causes of Bad Services - a vital diagnostic tool that will help you identify and solve the problems we all experience when attempting to deliver services that work. 

There are many books out there that will help you design a service once, but Bad Services goes beyond this to help us understand how we create the conditions for good services to thrive in the future.

Genres: Personal Growth, Design

272 pages, Paperback

Published June 25, 2026

About the author

Louise Downe writes under the pen name Lou Downe.

Director of Design and Service Standards for the UK Government, based at GDS and founder of service design in government, she was voted one of the UKs top 50 creative leaders,and one of world’s 100 most influential people in digital government.

Reviews

[Mantas Naslenas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following on from “Good Services” published back in 2020, Lou Downe looks on the flip side to show what does it mean to design and build a bad service.

1/3 case studies, 1/3 instruction manual and 1/3 bold choice of colours, Bad Services draws from history and from Downe’s own experience in the Civil Service to warn us designers of austerity-era design, short-termism and the risks of not truly understanding our users.

[Joshua R. Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s very good but I did not finish! In the words of colleagues, it’s more of a good handbook which you can flick through for inspiration.

I’d heavily recommend getting a print version. It’s styled like it belongs in an art museum and makes it very pleasurable to browse through.