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· 1,740 ratings · 86 reviews

Start your review of This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases

Service Design has been an interesting topic for me for a some time. Finally I wanted to get more understanding about it and its basic. That's the reason I got my hands on a book that was saying to be "the book" for service design -This is Service Design Thinking by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider.

I was super excited to start reading about the wonderful world of service design. I read and read and read and became really bored. First hundred pages of the book the authors are trying to say WE A

I was super excited to start reading about the wonderful world of service design. I read and read and read and became really bored. First hundred pages of the book the authors are trying to say WE ARE IMPORTANT. I knew it already, designing good services is important and doing it structured way with service design must be even more important. After this start, I wasn't anymore really sure. If someone needs to state in so many different ways that they are important, maybe they really are not.

In the middle section book got better. It told in short articles, bit like blog posts, methods to do service design. Unfortunately these were quite simplistic and didn't dig into most of those properly. If you think of a book like Gamestorming, that's about ten times more useful for these methods than this book.

My hopes was for the last section of the book, examples of service design. As the whole book, that turned out to be a disappointment too. Examples were not really interesting and the way those were presented was quite dull. In one of the examples the designed service never got in to use, but they stated project was still a success. I think the exact opposite. Service which was designed but never got live, is a failure, real big failure.

Book was planned by top service designers and that might have been that the reading experience also failed. They tried in top of everything to renew the concept of a book with coloring, icons and lines going here and there. That made the book complex to read. Maybe there would not have been need to renew a such a working concept that a book is.

I honestly don't recommend this book to anyone. I want to believe Service Design and the people behind service design. This book does no good to the practice. There must be better books about the subject than this one.

I don't think I learned anything about this book. At least not in the positive way. Do yourself a favor, mark this to the "no go" list.

This review was originally published in my blog - here

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I heard about service design back in Italy. I actually didn't understand what it meant. For me, it was marketing. It was design thinking. It was "smoke". However, I kept this book under the radar for later reading. It took a week to finish this book, according to several websites, one of the fundamental documents on service Design.
Now the definition is clearer and more real in my head.
The book is simple and goes straight to the point:
- Introduction and Context
- Toolbox (the most interesting p I heard about service design back in Italy. I actually didn't understand what it meant. For me, it was marketing. It was design thinking. It was "smoke". However, I kept this book under the radar for later reading. It took a week to finish this book, according to several websites, one of the fundamental documents on service Design.
Now the definition is clearer and more real in my head.
The book is simple and goes straight to the point:
- Introduction and Context
- Toolbox (the most interesting part)
- Business cases (unfortunately, most of the solutions are too old and outdated)
- Essays
Don't feel like I know service design after reading this book, however, I can see where to use it and how I can include this tools into my very own (and eclectic) toolbox. ...more

This is a textbook.

What is service design?
Service design is an interdisciplinary approach that combines different methods and tools form various disciplines. It is a new way of thinking as opposed to a new stand-alone academic discipline.
The approach of service design refers to the process of designing rather than to its outcome. The outcome of a service design process can have various forms: rather abstract organizational structures, operation process, service experiences and even concrete phys

This is a textbook.

About the book
It is a good start point for reading about service design. It introduces tools of service design such as Stakeholders Maps, Shadowing, Service safaris, and etc. Also, there is five case studies in the end of book.

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Idk just kept going on about service design in the meta sense way too much. Like we get it. Service design is important and new(ish). I liked the last essay but all of the icons and annotation systems felt unnecessary and distracting which is a little bit *alanis morissette voice* ironic.

Clear and nicely formatted 'handbook' on service design. Expect no major breakthroughs or new insights, but if you're looking for a quick understanding or brushup on what Serice Design Thinking is, this is your book. Clear and nicely formatted 'handbook' on service design. Expect no major breakthroughs or new insights, but if you're looking for a quick understanding or brushup on what Serice Design Thinking is, this is your book. ...more

Good stuff that everyone responsible for product development should at least be aware of. One star deducted for the horrible Kindle adaptation.

This is a broad stroke style book aimed at being a reference toolkit rather than a front to back read. An essential for awareness, but if youre looking for deep dives and case studies, look elsewhere. Practitioners can probably skip through most of it and focus on filling gaps in their knowledge. Also, I wish the authors had done a better job of pointing readers to further reading and resources in each short chapter. It would have made the book more useable. Still a decent reference and it's cle This is a broad stroke style book aimed at being a reference toolkit rather than a front to back read. An essential for awareness, but if youre looking for deep dives and case studies, look elsewhere. Practitioners can probably skip through most of it and focus on filling gaps in their knowledge. Also, I wish the authors had done a better job of pointing readers to further reading and resources in each short chapter. It would have made the book more useable. Still a decent reference and it's clear a lot of work went into this books's production. ...more

The best book out there in service design. Great concept and many examples. Actually, I have used it in business, showed chapters for clients, let them read and understand why its important to to field studies, user research and so on. It works.

Feb 26, 2018 Peter rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Some personal notes, not an actual review:

Service design seems to a bit of everything. Synonym to business development and consulting. Includes everything from marketing and strategy to interaction design. Background probably from user experience design. Nothing revolutionary, just a name for the approach to solving problems with several quite simple frameworks.

The book itself gives a good introduction into the topic. Tells how service design is part of everything with some examples. What I wou

Some personal notes, not an actual review:

The book itself gives a good introduction into the topic. Tells how service design is part of everything with some examples. What I would have wanted to see is if service designers are usually focused on one topic, e.g. interaction design. I would find it surprising if they basically did consulting in every field.

The book goes on to introduce several service design concepts. They are all quite simple and nothing you would not have seen before in other contexts. Followed by a few short case studies.

While reading the often I felt like I read a few pages of which included a few sentences of actual content. There's a lot of fluff in there, riding with the hype and staying on a very general level.

Summary: service design = consulting/business development. A term for problem solving. Nothing revolutionary, but I guess often you can rely on the basic fundamental things in business. Good introduction to the topic.

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Dec 26, 2018 Petr Augustin rated it did not like it

I didn't find anything useful in this book.
Most of the intro is just a lot of SJW ideology, written into service/product/marketing design. Explaining how this magical inclusive design process will change the world into a utopia. As most of the actual methodology we now use as service designers comes from much richer etnography, psychology and human factors practice, which were actually well grounded, I seriously doubt that another workshop and post it session is going to stop climate change. Ser I didn't find anything useful in this book.
Most of the intro is just a lot of SJW ideology, written into service/product/marketing design. Explaining how this magical inclusive design process will change the world into a utopia. As most of the actual methodology we now use as service designers comes from much richer etnography, psychology and human factors practice, which were actually well grounded, I seriously doubt that another workshop and post it session is going to stop climate change. Service design is largely political process in organizational change design, that explains how ideas gain momentum by making people feel included. It's actual "work" methods come from mentioned arch-practices. It's most valuble aspect is generating more income for companies. There's about 30 pages in this very expensive book actually dedicated to methods. You can get those from most wiki pages online. Spare yourself an afternoon and just skip this book. ...more

2 stars: a bit too much thinking, not enough service design.

The information: not as practical as I would have hoped. It starts with a ~holistic~(you'll get tired of that word) reflection on what service design is, which in my opinion is a bit too vague. The tools are nice, but not as well described, so you have to use your information a bit on how to apply them. The cases are good to get a general idea of service design in practice, but I was hoping for a bit more detail on how the tools were us

2 stars: a bit too much thinking, not enough service design.

The readability: overall this was fine, but the first part contained too much abstract thinking and fancy words to my taste.

The structure: they did something funky to the structure. Like they explain at the beginning of the book, they try to treat it as a service. It's a fun gimmick, but I don't think it really adds anything to the book.

Best part: the medical case.

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The content of this book on service design smells heavily of marketing and advertising agencies and not so much of actual design of a service. The authors make it seem service design is something from the past twenty years or so and ignore everything that has been done in the design of (IT) services through Lean, Design for Six Sigma, ITIL, VeriSM, etc.
Some of their concepts are useful in order to mve the focus more onto the customer journey and people's needs, but the application remains very h The content of this book on service design smells heavily of marketing and advertising agencies and not so much of actual design of a service. The authors make it seem service design is something from the past twenty years or so and ignore everything that has been done in the design of (IT) services through Lean, Design for Six Sigma, ITIL, VeriSM, etc.
Some of their concepts are useful in order to mve the focus more onto the customer journey and people's needs, but the application remains very high-level and workshoppy without clear (let alone measurable) benefits being shown at the end of the process.
This is not design thinking, it is a superficial approach to applying marketing techniques to services. ...more

I read this book for a grad course I'm in, and it was the most difficult thing to get through. The layout was distracting and the amount of typos throughout (extra words, missing words, misspelled words) just made my writer/editor heart scream out.

The strong point of the book is that it provides real-world examples of Service Design thinking in action. Unfortunately, this didn't provide enough information or context for me to see why such projects should be pushed for. Stuff sounded fancy, but

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Solid foundation. Covers service design from a variety of perspectives, including that it's a technique difficult to force into a single process. Stickdorn then offers a structured process, and a toolbox of methods. He then ties it all together by showing how this structured/unstructured process and methods were applied in real-life cases. I especially liked that he did not advocate for a dogmatic approach, and showed how service design tools and processes can be made flexible for imperfect real Solid foundation. Covers service design from a variety of perspectives, including that it's a technique difficult to force into a single process. Stickdorn then offers a structured process, and a toolbox of methods. He then ties it all together by showing how this structured/unstructured process and methods were applied in real-life cases. I especially liked that he did not advocate for a dogmatic approach, and showed how service design tools and processes can be made flexible for imperfect real-life applications. ...more

This is the first book I read on service design. I was expecting a much better introduction to service design than one that relies on my implicit understanding of the term. However, I found the different frameworks, methods, and tools valuable. The presentation of case studies was not very compelling for me and the last three chapters about motivation, perspectives, and research left me asking for more, perhaps due to my bias towards academic research. I found the format of the book fresh and ea This is the first book I read on service design. I was expecting a much better introduction to service design than one that relies on my implicit understanding of the term. However, I found the different frameworks, methods, and tools valuable. The presentation of case studies was not very compelling for me and the last three chapters about motivation, perspectives, and research left me asking for more, perhaps due to my bias towards academic research. I found the format of the book fresh and easy to skim through, but the cross linking within the book was not intuitive. ...more

Jan 07, 2018 Jakub rated it liked it

I read the book in the kindle version and while the book might have been desifned for the paper quite well, for kindle the design didn't work at all.

As for the content, I liked the presentation of the tools and the use cases from real world.

I didn't like the way the book was written. For my taste there was too much repetition.

Anyway, if you don't know what the hell is service design then this book provides quite good overview focused on the ways to apply it in real world.

I read the book in the kindle version and while the book might have been desifned for the paper quite well, for kindle the design didn't work at all.

As for the content, I liked the presentation of the tools and the use cases from real world.

I didn't like the way the book was written. For my taste there was too much repetition.

Anyway, if you don't know what the hell is service design then this book provides quite good overview focused on the ways to apply it in real world.

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A general overview of service design with a little bit of history. My only problem with these types of books are that because of scattered and brief introductions of concepts and theories, they become harder to learn any applicable knowledge from them. Of course, lack of cohesive story helps you disengage easily.

But, this book is a good catalogue of concepts, models and the mainstream discourse in SDT community.

This book is a must-read for any area of expertise inside a company (Operations, Marketing, Product, Servicing...). It explains the service design methodology and showcases an extensive library of tools and frameworks to frame problems and thus create useful solutions in the form of products, services or processes. It's visually coded so you can just answer your question or take a deep dive into various elements of design 👌🏼

Everyone recommended this book to me for service design, however, it felt more like a beginners guide to service design with too much emphasis on how amazing service design is. This book seems targeted at selling service design to users, however, why would anyone read a 300+ page book if they weren't already a little sold. I would not recommend this book. I think that stating it as a guide to service design is vastly underselling the field of service design. Everyone recommended this book to me for service design, however, it felt more like a beginners guide to service design with too much emphasis on how amazing service design is. This book seems targeted at selling service design to users, however, why would anyone read a 300+ page book if they weren't already a little sold. I would not recommend this book. I think that stating it as a guide to service design is vastly underselling the field of service design. ...more

If you are looking for a book that gives you an overview of what service design thinking is and what types there are to conduct it this book helps. It offers types, examples without taking you by hand how to do it. It offers examples to get an idea how it can help you.

I also bought the workbook so am curious about the content of that book.

Take it seriously when the book says it's the basics, tools and cases. Language is simple, understandable. It would be most beneficial if the tools were more deeply described, it's a good panaroma thought. Take it seriously when the book says it's the basics, tools and cases. Language is simple, understandable. It would be most beneficial if the tools were more deeply described, it's a good panaroma thought. ...more

Sep 13, 2017 Leon rated it liked it

This is a must read for anyone interested in service design thinking.

But reading it is a bit like a pilgrimage. It feels like climbing a mountain. In many ways it is a hard book to read, primarily because it is trying to be new in the way it presents the information.

Dec 22, 2017 Jo rated it it was amazing

Probably a must-read essential for getting yourself familiar with the topic and understanding the concept and the context of design thinking. It will make you confident about the topic and ready to move to deeper understanding and application of DT.

I'm not service designer or UX specialist, but this book was as with practical tools. IF you have UX specialist who can help to exain things.
Without participating in service design process, it will be useless.

May 22, 2017 Mimi Webb rated it really liked it

Great book on learning about service design thinking and how to implement this strategy into organisations.

Practical content

Context, methods, and case studies. What you need in a service design book to guide productive work and real impact.

Jan 28, 2018 Tara rated it it was ok

The book is good for a beginner to peruse but I found that it wasn't particularly helpful to me. The book is good for a beginner to peruse but I found that it wasn't particularly helpful to me. ...more

Feb 15, 2018 Sertac rated it it was amazing

This book should be considered as one of the classics for this and related fields/methodologies. A must have one.

Feb 18, 2019 Eetu Kirsi rated it really liked it

I would say this is a good introduction to Service Design Thinking. Though, as the field is evolving, this book is loosing it's relevance. New edition would serve the purpose. I would say this is a good introduction to Service Design Thinking. Though, as the field is evolving, this book is loosing it's relevance. New edition would serve the purpose. ...more

If you don't have a clue what service design is. It's a fair book. Otherwise, it's quite old nowadays. If you don't have a clue what service design is. It's a fair book. Otherwise, it's quite old nowadays. ...more

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Mahogany L. Browne is the author of Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby, and Black Girl Magic. She's also the...

"Designers possess more than simply an ability to style products; they are practitioners of an applied process of creative skills: identifying problems, researching, analysing, evaluating, synthesising and then conceptualising, testing and communicating solutions." — 2 likes

"THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY CANVAS At the online touchpoint of the book we provide you with a canvas developed to support you when designing services. You can use it not only for yourself to get a quick overview of certain service processes, but also with providers for a self-portrayal and with customers and other stakeholders to explore and evaluate services. Besides visually simplifying existing services, you can also use it to sketch service improvements and innovations. It supports many of the tools presented later in this book. The Customer Journey Canvas is available under cc license on our website. Try it, adapt or modify it, take a snapshot and share how you use the canvas through our website. Watch out for service design thinking! NOTE:" — 1 likes

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