Good Services: How to design services that work

by Lou Downe

Service design is a rapidly growing area of interest in design and business management. There are a lot of books on how to get started, but this is the first book that describes what a ‘good’ service is and how to design one. This book lays out the essential principles for building services that work well for users. Demystifying what we mean by a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ service and describing the common elements within all services that mean they either work for users or don’t.

A practical book for practitioners and non-practitioners alike interested in better service delivery, this book is the definitive new guide to designing services that work for users.

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction, Technology, Buisness, Creative

224 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2020

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

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I finished this colourful book, I thought that it's a good 4-star book.

Then I sat for a while staring into nothing, digesting it, working to see how much I have retained. It felt a bit blurry. I had an impression that I just read something very interesting, but it is in one untidy pile in my mind. So I decided to go through the chapter structure again, noting down the summaries and intentionally checking them against my current projects.
After I did that, I realised that it's not a four-star book but a solid five-star since so much of it is applicable and usable so many insights I can take back to my work straight away.

The book gives a great overview of what services are, the problems, and where to look for pitfalls. It elevates your Design/Planning perspective above the Product so you can see more 'of the land' and how it all strategically comes together - users, service providers, over time and cross channels.

The example cases in the book are great, sometimes I couldn’t connect them in a clear cut-way with the principle, maybe it was me not following the logic trail very tightly. Going back through chapter headings, being familiar with the content already, solved it for me, and everything fell into place. The examples are all interesting taken from many different sectors; they are great examples of our Design History and how things can go very wrong despite the best of our intentions.

About the format of the book. At the beginning, I wasn't sure about the colours and the bold font, but as I read it, I noticed how much I am enjoying the bold colour splashes breaks of whole pages. How nice it feels to hold this small chunky book made of very thick, good quality paper. The light orange on white in certain places was harder to read, but I got over myself.

Quotes that really got me thinking:

"A service is still a service even if you don’t provide all of it."

"Don’t just design the steps of your service, design the space between them."

"Good services are only as good as their weakest link."

"How you check if something has changed is as important as how you respond to that change."

"How you make a decision is as important as the decision you make" - This quote comes from principle 14, one I enjoyed and reflected on the most.

"Use computers and humans for what they are good at."

[Luis Alt · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a long time now, Service Designers have preached that there are no formulas for good services, that each service is unique and it is required to do a complete project that goes through user research, co-creation and prototypes to finally formalize the strategy and operation in a service blueprint to discover what exactly an organization needs to do. However, the experienced and talented Lou Downe shows us in this book that there are some good practices that might be applied to any situation. Not only this is a great book about good services, but it is a milestone for the discipline. Definitely a required reading for everyone that works with service (and) design. If I could choose only one book in my area of work (Service Design) to have written myself, this would be it. It is insightful, easy to read and the perfect starting point for any good service. Thank you, Lou, for this incredible piece of work!

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are lots of good ideas in this book, and I know it's going to help us at work. It's let down in a number of ways, though.

It feels like it's missing one or two chapters at the end; after going through all the principles, it would be helpful to pull them together in a "here's how you might incorporate the principles when designing a new service", and "here's how to approach an existing service". Having read it, I'm going to sketch out my missing chapter, to help think about how to best apply this at work.

It's also let down by the presentation: many pages are just walls of dark text, not helped by the choice of typeface / weight. Many sections would benefit from a bit of structure. I found pink paragraphs of text on a white background hard to read (that's old person's eyes for you, I guess). There were too many typos as well. Some of the anecdotes would be improved by a trim.

All told, it felt like a book that was released too soon. A shame because I think it has the potential for a 5, but I ended up trying to decide between 3 or 4. I'd probably give it 7/10.

All that said, it's still worth a read, as they are so many good ideas in it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thoughtful and well organized ideas in this book. Wish some of the font weight, kerning and colour use was more accessible for folks with vision issues and generally easier to read.

[Aniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buen libro, muy fácil de leer. Tiene temas muy interesantes y da bastantes ejemplos sobre cómo la mayoría de los servicios no están diseñados teniendo al usuario y su experiencia en mente. Cada capítulo habla como de diferentes principios y vienen con sus respectivos ejemplos y posibles soluciones.

Recomendado para cualquier persona pero en especial aquellos que están involucrados en diseñar algún tipo de experiencias para usuarios :)

[Natalía Papadopoúlou · Rating 4 out of 5]

- What is a service?
- “A service is something that helps someone do something”.
- What is a good service?
- That’s a much longer story!

When I read the first chapter and the definition of what a device is I got disappointed. I almost dropped reading the book. You see, explaining what service design is just triggered many uncomfortable discussions in the past for me and seeing such an over simplistic approach made me think “I would have never gained trust of any stakeholder by saying this”.

However the rest of the book is gold. Just reading all the stories that derive of years of research and reveal how irrational most services are, is priceless. I would just recommend this book to everyone, not just designers, as we’ve all interacted with many bad services in the last and we couldn’t pin point what’s wrong.

[Paulina · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book that breaks down service design into 15 simple principles.

It’s for everyone - it is easy to understand and there’s no jargon.

Every sentence is there for a reason, with clear intention.

Every principle is brought to life by real life stories to illustrate its value and importance.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of principles, but a solid starting point.

[Mike Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice ideas on designing services that balance efficiency and personality.

But let’s talk about the bold font. A miss. Authors yelled at me for 200 pages. Literally created a book that didn’t do service to their idea of designing good services. Probably would be 4⭐️ with formatting alteration.

[Bindu Upadhyay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone who is working in a space which offers services or products to people. Very relevant for B2C folks.

Loved the content very much.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and well explained principles. Good content and relatable examples.

But publication contains a lot of mistakes (who did the proof reading?) and colours of the text are hard to read sometimes because of the contrast (neon orange and pale teal). Also I found it quite hard to read with this choice of bold font (Helvetica was designed to be a display font, not a long text reading font). Unfortunately, book designers went for eye-catchy posters style rather than the pleasure of reading.


Content: 5/5
Book design: 2/5

[Bart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice high level overview of what boxes a good service needs to tick. For me it is a useful reference book to reflect on my work regarding services. Designers and others already practicing Service Design this book will not shed real new lights. Very useful for product owners and stakeholders who are fairly new to service design.

At first sight the book looks nicely designed with bright colors and bold typography. This does not help legibility however.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a good introduction to service design principles. But if you’re looking for something more ground breaking, this isn’t it.

I think it would have benefited from more time being developed, and advice about actually putting the principles into practice (and a more thorough proof-read!).

A respectable addition to the literature on the topic, but I expected a bit more.

[Linnea Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, great principles and advice. However the branding; I love the bold font and colors. But the whole book is bold and reading bold text for several pages is very heavy for the user. Which goes against its own principles. But apart from that, brilliant read.

[Cristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. Easy to understand and so good to have examples for each principle.

Loved the book layout, font and font colour.

[Rosa Shand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been travelling for long enough I felt like I had probably forgotten how to do my job.

This book was fantastic and it made me excited to hopefully be employed and do said job once again in the near future. It helped that it had a genuinely cool design not a stuffy corporate look and feel. I will display it proudly on my book shelf and wave it around nonchalantly to avoid the design student to corporate drone sell out allegations. It’s a corporate job but it’s a COOL corporate job (??) ok!

My favourite fact from the book which I WILL be using to make my job sound more #interesting and #importanf at ~dinner parties~ is that 80% of UK govt spend is on services and that 60% of that spend is on services that have gone wrong because they have been badly designed. Unfortunately I cannot work for the UK govt because I can’t get security clearance due to having not lived here for the last 5 years but I take my hat off to all service designers in government here and everywhere. Keep fighting the good fight.

[Aly Blenkin - now on the StoryGraph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the book was very insightful! However, I found the text hard to read, specifically the bright colours and bold font.

[Natasha den Dekker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as part of my work bookclub and as a primer of service design it's good.
Some examples of design (a lot of the examples can be seen in Invisible Women tbh) but the government examples are really interesting and highlight how we need to holistically evaluate our services, not just the disparate parts to create better services for citizens. Definitely one to read and take notes and mark-up!

[sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

THANK GOD THIS BOOK EXISTS

[Celina · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone providing or working with a service - read this book! Lou Downe lays out 15 principles of good services that are seemingly obvious but are so well described and detailed. I give this 5 stars because of the actionable tips at the end of each principle to help you design better services where many other similar books can lay out why design is bad whilst not giving you the tools to better it. Will probably always have this book on hand from now on.

[V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glad to have picked the one up again. So much great advice for experience designers.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good Services: How to Design Services That Work is the first playbook for service design that I've read. Overall, it's accessibly written and a good intro on the topic. Take Downe's definition of a service for instance; he describes it simply as helping someone do what they want to do, whether it is as simple as buying a chocolate bar, or as complicated as moving house? The user is the person who has the goal they need to achieve and Downe stresses that it is the user, not you, who gets to decide what the service is. You might provide one step in the process (e.g. surveying a house) but to the user, the service is ultimately buying a house.

There are many, many reasons why services fail to deliver, much less fail to delight. Those involved in providing one step of service imagining that IS the service, for one, when in fact "the parts of a service might be provided by a number of different organisations but, to a user, a service is one continuous set of actions towards that end goal, regardless of who is providing it. It sounds elementary enough - that we should see things from the user's perspective - but it is anything but. Indeed, Downe notes that it starts from how we define the service to be provided:

"The internet has changed the way that we access and use services, and our expectations around doing so, even if that service is not actually used online...Regardless of how your service is consumed…Google…will be where [your users] start…the major challenge this creates is that your user will start by looking for what they think they need, not what you've decided they need"

Another cause for failure is the fact that "the services we use everyday, from student loans to healthcare and housing, are more likely to be the product of technological constraints, political whim and personal taste" than the result of intentional design to meet user needs". Maybe there was a policy change, or we wanted to use a new platform or close a channel. All these have implications on the user but Downe argues that very seldom do we "turn these everyday decisions into conscious design decisions".

A third factor is services being shaped by the technology first used to deliver them, even if that technology is no longer the main channel. Downe notes:

"Services are so affected by the technology we use to deliver them, that they often retain the ways of working that this technology dictates, well after they have been moved to another channel, unless great effort has been taken to understand how that service should work in its new incarnation." So for pre-Internet services that were "digitised" so that they could be consumed through contemporary channels, they remained "mostly unchanged…these services were designed for a world where a person was always on hand to help you do something - be that filling in a form, choosing a product or returning something. But this is not how services work on the internet. Services that needed expert knowledge were fine in the 1920s when experts were on hand for support in a high-street branch, but it certainly isn't fine when a user is trying to find a navigate a service on their own."

Downe lays out 15 principles for good service design
#1: Be easy to find: We need to describe our services using language that our users use, not how organisations see their services. Organisations tend to use terms like "account registration", "claims reimbursement" because we need these terms - nouns - to track the various activities that the organisation operates. But these internal references soon become exposed to users, even if we don't mean to initially. But users tend to think in terms of verbs - things they want to do e.g. learn to drive, buy a house. Downe emphasises that we need to think about what language a user might use, and that "nouns are for experts, verbs are for everyone". Name your service based on what your user wants to achieve and how they are likely to describe it. Describe the task and not the platform/technology e.g. e-portal, ihub and what have you.

#2: Clearly explain its purpose - what it does, why it does it , how it does it and who it is for. That way, your target audience will know what is expected of them and why. Those outside the target audience will likewise be moved out of the journey as early as possible.

#3: Set a user's expectations of the service. Here, Downe makes a distinction between universal expectations, assumed expectations and outlier expectations. We always must meet universal expectations (e.g. if you go to an ATM, you expect to be able to withdraw money), try to reduce as many assumed expectations as possible and keep an eye on outlier expectations so you're prepared if some of these become universal.

#4: Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do: Oftentimes, providers only focus on what they can do rather than what the user wants to achieve, perhaps because we don't understand the user and the user's entire journey, because we've mistaken our step in the process for the service itself, or because we see the cross-boundary collaboration with other stakeholders (on data, processes, language) required to meet user needs as beyond our mandate.

#5: Work in a way that is familiar: See if there is an easier, more intuitive or more effective way of doing things. If there is, test it to understand how different this is from users' existing expectations of how your service might work.

#6: Require no prior knowledge to use: Making services overly complicated creates what Downe calls "parasitic services" that charge users to help them navigate complicated services like filing taxes and buying a home. But the question is, why should these services be so complicated that ordinary people can't figure them out on their own? The danger comes when service providers like governments start thinking of these intermediaries as their users, rather than the person wanting to achieve that particular goal.

#7: Be agnostic of organisational structures: Downe notes that "our organisations were designed for a world where a service was devised, then delivered, consistently, with minimal changes for a long period of time. They were designed to be operated in an environment where the pace of change was a lot slower than it is today. These unchanging services were designed to be provided by organisations that also didn't change". Separation of data, incompatible process, inconsistent languages and incompatible criteria of use across organisational siloes all create fragmented user journeys. Rather than "fixate on getting the perfect structure that will allow everything to work perfectly with minimal crossover", Downe argues that we should find ways of collaborating and working together better, to enable better cross-boundary communication and work. Collaboration is, of course, very hard to do in practice. Downe notes that it requires permission - or creating a permissive environment, shared goals and standards and shared incentives to do so.

#8: Require the minimum possible steps to complete. Here, Downe notes that we need to not only think about the number of steps a service needs to have, but also how quickly a user should move through them. It is not necessarily the case that the faster a user goes through the service journey, the better. Some things might require more deliberate thought and consideration on the user's part, for instance. We need to not only design the steps of the service, but also the space between them.

#9: Be consistent throughout, not uniform: this means being consistent across the user journey (no gaps), across different channels, and between users. There may be premium versions of the service but it must be clear and defensible why this is the case. For instance, it is valid to have faster broadband for those who pay more but less so to offer telephone support only to a select group. Being consistent also means focussing on the abilities of your whole organisation, ensuring that the team is free of weak links, and not just focussing on the skills of a few superstars.

#10: Have no dead ends. The most useful bit in this section was Downe's reminder to consider the ability of users and make sure that there are routes to use the service that are available to everyone. For instance, some barriers to services include: ability to remember long numbers, ability to follow complex instructions, ability to remember dates, times and appointments, ability to get somewhere physically, ability to get somewhere or do something during working hours, ability to read a language fluently, ability to read PDFs or access 'non-accessible' digital services, having access to things like a phone number, credit card, email address and other identifiers.

#11: Be usable by everyone, equally. Identify the reasons why someone might be more likely to be excluded from your service e.g. their ability (which may change) to do things like see, read, hear, remember things, get somewhere physically; or characteristics by which people define themselves (which may also change) e.g. marital status, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender. Downe cautions that when things are going well with a service, it is easy to prioritise making sure it is inclusive but when deadlines are short, we might be tempted to use the 80/20 rule, or avoid "boiling the ocean" but it is imperative that we see inclusive access as a fundamental necessity, not an enhancement.

#12: Encourage the right behaviours from users and service providers. Make sure the KPIs you put don't create perverse incentives. We want to encourage behaviours that benefit the user, the staff, that help the company to be sustainable and that benefit the world (or at least do no harm).

#13: Quickly respond to change
#14: Clearly explain why a decision has been made
#15: Make it easy to get human assistance

[Norbert Boros · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content itself pretty great, I think it's a perfect starting point anyone who wants to understand the basic rules of service design. In the ideal future, it would be great if any conversation would start based on these rules, if we talk about services. The weak point of the book is the typography, to read these bold letters quite exhausting - which is a bit ironic because the author mentions many times the inclusiveness. Despite the book-design issues, I think the Good Services will be one of the essential books of service design.

[Hoilo1122]

It is quite ironic that a book about 'good services' has been one of the messiest books I've read. Over the course of 220 pages, I've encountered about 10-15 mistakes that should have been caught by an editor. On top of that the orange font that is used in most summaries is very hard on the eyes.

The content is quite good, but because of what I mentioned above, I would not recommend the book.

[César Cordero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro

Un libro o de cabecera para aquellos que se dedican al diseño de experiencias. Los principios siguen vigentes y se pueden utilizar en el diagnóstico de servicios en proceso o para la creación de nuevos servicios.

[Maike Klip · Rating 5 out of 5]

10 sterren!

[Kakau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrible typography. Awesome content!

[Philippe Demougin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. Very helpful for people working in service design. Not very well written, unfortunately. In particular, unusual amounts of errors.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great introductory book into the world of service design for me. I've recently joined a service design team and one of the things I was struggling with somewhat is how this discipline feels a little 'flavour of the month' where I work and how everyone is adopting a new language. What I was interested in is if there is anything genuinely new here for me and if a shift in perspective for me was going to be helpful. I say this as someone who has worked in the change / improvement / digital / business analysis world for a decade or so and have seen various methodologies and disciplines hooked into. One of the things I have struggled with is by distilling 'the things we do' into services, is if we fail to understand the full systemic picture and I guess does service design lend itself to reductionism.

Reading this book I am left with the impression that it isn't, but like another discipline I am interested in, service design, like system thinking is very dangerous in the wrong hands but there is something in this for those trying to improve the world we live in.

Lou Downe's book is gloriously beautiful. It's very colourful for a book which is solely text and there is clever use of font size and colour to accentuate points or to highlight key thinking or bullet points. I get the criticism though how some of these fonts may present accessibility issues for some (which in some ways goes against one of their principles). For me though I loved dipping into this and reading a little here and there and letting the section rest a little for me.

The book essentially provides fifteen principles for designing good services. There were some which were obvious to me as they are kind of rooted in process improvement, there were others which were less so with a focus on how people digitally engage with services. Also within here there were perspectives which recognises complexity with people engaging with services and also draws on systems thinking and interventionist theory and thinking holistically. It's not laid on too thick but some of the principles touch on organisational design, culture and organisational psychology which I enjoyed making those links.

Each principle has a story attached (and how I am a sucker for effective narratives in making a point about something). I was almost laughing out loud at the example given for 'A good service is consistent throughout' where the author references 'Total Football' and the concept of no weak links in a team or service. I'm laughing because I have used the exact same analogy to describe self organising autonomous agile teams who can utilise and move into space as needed (think in terms of covering gaps or exploiting opportunities). It's funny because when I was an operational manager I modelled how the team worked inspired by Total Football so this was a joy to me to read.

One thing I hadn't really appreciated when reading this book was thinking about time and space for decisions and how in a world of 'improve everything, do everything faster' how sometimes creating space for people to take their time is important. The more I read, the more I found myself identifying with the perspectives in the book, how many of my concerns or struggles with connecting this to how I have worked in the past are resolved (there really are not to many new ideas). What I think we have here is without being explicit a book for people who design and make decisions about stuff to really think about what they are doing, whilst drawing on a rich knowledge of wider methodologies and traditions.

The cynic and sceptic in me has been won over. The thinking in this book doesn't put a shiny font on something with little substance, it has given me lots of ideas in how I can work differently and has provided me with fresh perspectives without trampling over other approaches.

Reckon I will thumb through this one a lot!

I recommend a quick glance at this page here if anyone wants to see more of the principles before purchasing, and there is quite a lot of good information in the links to give the curious a greater awareness.

https://good.services/15-principles-o...

[Pablo Alejo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First Book You Read To Understand Service Design

Within consulting, services are one of the more challenging concepts to explain to someone when you don't have the right words. As a result, you either overcomplicate them, over-simplify them, or just say things that create more confusion.

Service Design, as a discipline, is also tough to define when you don't have a straightforward way to explain what a service is and how they impact the world around them.

In this book, Lou Downe defines a service in the most elegantly simple yet quickly understood way I've ever heard/read, "Something that helps someone do something." It doesn't get easier than that.

Lou's 15 principles guide readers, with clear examples of failures and successes, on what makes up good services. These examples are easy to understand and show how each principle makes a fundamental difference in how it could change the user's experience.

I would encourage this book to be the first book any aspiring Service Designer reads in their growth journey. Before adequately designing services, you must understand what they are, explain them to a 5-year-old, and demonstrate their value to a CEO. This book will help you do just that and give you principles to help you design good services that will benefit everyone.

I would also encourage anyone in government or business to read this book, especially if you deploy digital solutions. Understanding the services you provide or are a part of will significantly impact how you deliver those solutions.

[Manicpaperclip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to the theory of building good services. Lots to think about in terms of being truly user centred.

As lots of people mention, the practical elements aren't included but it is good beginner brain food to start thinking about ways you can improve your own services.

Ultimately if service design was as formulaic and easy to sum up in a relatively short book (when you take out the pages of large text and pictures) from a practical perspective then every service would be amazing and the government would be able to use all the money from service failures to fund schools and the NHS.

Perhaps as a compromise some reflective questions or actions to assess your service might have given it that extra edge. But to be honest you can kind of pick these out yourself based on the considerations Lou Downe mentions.

The real life examples of services successes and failures were really inciteful, and helped to contextualise the points that were made.

Whilst it doesn't mention the agile principles, it follows the same vein in terms of the environments teams need to create truly user centred services.

The biggest issue for me was about the format. If a website was designed in this way, or a digital service I think the ui would be a challenge.

Some pages finish mid sentence and on the next page would be a picture or a block of text breaking the flow of the content. I found that quite distracting and confusing. Also all bold content (which I wonder if it's an accessibility choice) but it felt like I was being shouted at lol