This Is Service Design Doing

I've owned this book for several years, but other than a really light skim some time ago, haven't picked it up. I'm coming into a change management role right now and thought I should pick it up. Once again, this is a technical reference book (it's literally called “A Practitioners' Handbook” - so I don't think it is really designed for someone to sit down and read it work for word like a piece of literature. That's not what I did - I did a version of academic skimming with a few sections that seemed particularly relevant getting a deep read. I think the book wants to be read this way given it is highly sectioned and labeled, with key text highlighted. I really liked this.

This is certainly an element of change management from a very particular viewpoint: designers, primarily in the technology domain. That said, I think there is a lot here that can be applied analogously elsewhere. Many of the facilitation, ideation, and planning tools, in particular, strike me as useful. I really liked the tools around Personas and Journey Maps. I saw these in practice for the first time this week unrelatedly and it was great to see a different view of them.

A lot of this book comes across as... Not exactly “dumbing down” academic subjects, but certainly making them easier to digest. If you haven't had an academic research course, and you're not engaging in academic research, the research component of this book is probably very useful. If you have, it might just be a helpful refresher.

I made a lot of marks and bookmarks to come back to this as a technical reference and I do plan to keep it around for access to the tools and cases to see what I can use from it analogously in organizational and programmatic change management.