Good Services
Lou Downe
This book was Damian Proctor’s answer to the question of: what would you recommend to the Growth team to better understand the nuances of service design in the public sector?
Since then, it’s been a go-to for a lot of us. Zach Bulick pulled a copy off of his shelf on a recent strategy call, and I’ve got mine dog-eared for nearly every project plan I work on. This book is a fantastic walkthrough of the concept of a service, and how it translates from a tactile experience to a digital one.
Here are a few of the lines that stuck with me the most:
“The service must work in a way that does not unnecessarily expose a user to the internal structure of the organization providing the service.”
This was one of those lines that seemed self-evident at first, but the more I sat with it, the more I realized how overlooked it can be. When you design your content streams, your website sections, or even the naming conventions of a service, it’s so easy to use the jargon and teaming terms you use internally. But how likely is it that internal working groups mirror customer expectations?
“Getting something done is always more important than who is providing the service.”
I felt this line deeply. Whether in the context of an elaborate pitch deck that prioritizes background and bios over a genuinely exciting work plan, or in something as standard as a sign-up process that does more showcasing than it does intaking. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder about the principles of basic customer service.
“The number of steps in a service should be equal to the number of decisions a user has to make.”
There’s powerful psychology at work behind this prompt. If you’re asked to work your way through several screens, but you’re not advancing the process or accomplishing something new with each refresh, how quickly do you lose motivation?
“A service is very often an activity that needs to be done.”
Another simple, poignant line.
Every digital service mirrors a physical activity—often as a replacement for it. That means there are existing expectations of steps, user flows, and benefits. Very few things get created without some precedent or set of expectations already in-play.
As someone who can easily get lost on either end of the service spectrum (thousands of steps in a spreadsheet, buried in formulas, vs. a lovely design that requires a forty page instruction manual), this book is an excellent reminder of the service values that should underpin our work. It might not be a daily reference, but I have been, and will continue to remember lines from it to keep wild ideas in check.
On the usefulness-to-me scale, I give it 3 / 4 Zaqirs.
