Frequently Asked Questions
These common questions and their short answers are taken from Lavrans Løvlie, Andy Polaine, and Ben Reason’s book Service Design, 2nd Edition: From Insight to Implementation (2025). You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.
- Is service design just systems thinking, customer experience, user experience, interaction design, or product design?
No. They are all close cousins to service design and will often be part of designing for services, but they are not the same. We often use the term user instead of customer in the book, sometimes interchangeably, but sometimes because there are contexts in which a service user might not be a customer or because a service user might also be a service provider (such as a teacher or a nurse). Some projects lend themselves to different language—customers, partners, clients, patients—depending on the project context. Interaction, user experience, and digital product design are often understood as design for screen-based interactions, but service design covers a broader range of channels than this. Some projects have a strong digital component, of course, so interaction, user experience, and product design have an important part to play, but so do industrial design, marketing, graphic design, systems thinking, and business and change management. Chapters 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 reveal the key differences. - Is service design “design thinking”?
Service design does, ideally, work at the strategic business level, connecting business propositions with the details of how they will be delivered. It also champions the idea of designing with people and not just for them (see Chapters 3, “Understanding People and Relationships,” and 4, “Turning Research into Insight and Action”). This may mean the use of terms such as co-production or methods that include multiple stakeholders within an organization, such as management and frontline staff. We see service design as distinct from design thinking in that it is also about doing design and implementation (we tend not to think in terms of delivery since most services are ongoing). It also makes use of designers’ abilities to visualize and make abstract ideas tangible in the form of prototypes, touchpoints, and other artifacts. Design doing is an essential component to the work. - You do not mention [insert your favorite method or framework here]. Why not?
We cover many practical methods in Chapters 4 and 7, “Prototyping Service Experiences” (and throughout the book), but due to space considerations we left out several methods that are commonly known or covered more thoroughly by other authors and have supplied references when that is the case. Instead, we have focused on those specific to service design. - Where are your references and sources?
We have provided footnotes for the key references in the book, where appropriate, but we did not want to turn the book into an academic text. That is not to say our arguments are not robust or rigorously researched. We have hundreds of case studies, papers, and references in our personal libraries and from our long careers in the industry. If there is something we should have credited or that is plain wrong, contact us on the book’s website (www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/service-design-second-edition/), and we will try to make amends, either on the site or in future editions. The Service Design Network (www.service-design-network.org), Jeff Howard’s excellent sites—Service Design Books (www.servicedesignbooks.org) and Service Design Research (http://howardesign.com/exp/service/index.php)—and Daniele Catalanotto’s Notion database of service design papers (https://store.swissinnovation.academy/a-list-of-900-service-design-academic-papers) are good places to find service design resources. - What is the best way to convince management to spend money on service design?
This is design’s perennial million-dollar question. In Chapter 8, “Measuring Services,” we discuss strategies for measuring the return on investment in service design and how to think about measurement, not just in terms of profits but also by considering other metrics. In Chapter 9, “Organizational Change,” we discuss organizational change—something that service design projects either trigger or are part of. Ultimately, the answer is that management might well not care about design, but about the outcomes it can help them achieve. Focus on outcomes and talk less about design, and you may find they suddenly care a lot more about what you can offer. - Are you saying that service design can do everything?
Service design is both broad and deep and necessarily covers many areas and disciplines, but as we argue in Chapter 10, “The Challenges Facing Service Design,” designers are not superheroes who can do it all, and framing ourselves in this way can be exclusionary, arrogant, and often induce organizational resistance. Service design works best when designers collaborate with professionals from the disciplines appropriate to the project in hand with a focus on outcomes over method dogma and a good dose of professional humility.
