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Service Design
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I’ve seen this book on shelves for years but never thought much of it until it kept popping up early on in my UX journey (the end of 2020 or so) and then made a prompt appearance on the Georgia Tech reading list. It took me a few months to finally receive the book from my local library!
Edit: It is now April 2023 and I just re-read this book to see how well it has aged based on my experience. Simply put: it has aged well.
Don Norman guides us through numerous case studies and relevant examples to convey some steadfast principles that will always apply to design. Rather than summarize the book, I will share my personal favorite takeaways and how I’ve applied some of the principles in my work (I’ve now had the chance to apply nearly all of them!)
As Don Norman says early on in this book:
“design is how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology.”
Design is about people and studying the needs of said people. I’ve been told I’m a ‘young career transitioner’ by many; in other words, I’m now doing something different from what I was doing before (Environmental Health / Compliance / Safety). In reality and based on Don Norman’s definition of design, this could not be further from the case.
Before UX, I studied how people interact with data, compliance requirements, toxins, and each other; I now do the same but with digital technology. We are all designers in some way or another.
Looking back on what I originally wrote in 2021 when reflecting on this book still applies in 2023. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to work at an organization with limited UX maturity and as a result had the opportunity to focus on establishing a UX vision/roadmap (justifying UX).
“In design, the secret to success is to understand what the real problem is”
“We can't fix problems unless people admit they exist.”
These two simple quotes have proven to be constantly valuable over the last two years or so. For the sake of job security, it’s important to complete tasks but for the sake of design (and business for that matter), it’s vital to provide the right solution for the right problem. It’s good to have problems! That simply means that as a designer, you’re doing something right: successful discovery. When it comes to isolating problems, another quote has constantly crept back into my mind:
“There is no substitute for direct observation of and interaction with the people who will be using the product”
I took Don Norman’s advice to heart and have always fought for semi-structured usability testing (also thank you Steve Krug). Without fail, every single qualitative test provided countless new insights that helped to define the problem. Numbers are great but we have to constantly remind ourselves that there is a lot going on that can’t be quantified by analytics. This brings me to another great reminder:
“Much of design is done by engineers who are experts in technology but limited in their understanding of people.”
Based on formal education standards, developers are taught to think logically. It’s simply true and it’s something that I also have had to remind myself of somewhat often. I’ve had the amazing opportunity of working with some great engineers; they have reminded me just how important having informed research and design is. Lastly, from a management perspective:
“Most innovation is done as an incremental enhancement of existing products.”
Cost and understanding. These seem to be the reasons that organizations want to only hire a single “UX consultant” for 3 months rather than establish a lasting design presence. In some ways, this is a failure of the existing designer (if applicable) to communicate the value of UX. However, it can also just be a failure of the organization to implement best business practices. Whatever the reason, the quote lives on!
Since reading this book for the first time in 2021, I’ve now had the opportunity to implement some of Don Norman’s recommended design principles!
First and foremost: design is emotional. It can be a source of ‘delight’ and it can also be a source of daily frustration (ie poor enterprise UX). I’ve been able to witness firsthand just how important empathy and soft skills in general are for designers.
“Cognition and emotion are tightly intertwined, which means that the designers must design with both in mind.”
This quote above is a constant reminder that thoughts and feelings (qualitative data) are just as important as key metrics (quantitative data); both need to work together! During one specific project, I was constantly encouraged to plow ahead after looking at site metrics. The metrics were definitely telling but half of the picture was still missing! “Why?” is the question for this scenario. Sure it seems obvious to other designers but it is anything but obvious to those who are being measured based on their output during a given time frame. Additionally:
“Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior, causing otherwise sensible people to do things they know are wrong and possibly dangerous”
Before I even read this book, I worked on a system that was tied with employee/lab safety. If things were not fed into the system accurately, there could have been genuine safety concerns or accidents (and fines/enforcement) as a result. Even while conducting research to iterate the system, I found that users (because of bad design) were constantly cutting corners and trying to speed up the process as much as possible - almost always because of the pressure of accompanying coworkers.
Lastly: flexibility is key!
“Any system that does not allow for special cases will fail”
Implementing best practices for this can be complicated: we have to always plan for when things go wrong and ALWAYS assume people will make errors. As a result, I’ve learned to:
- make items being acted upon very prominent
- make operations reversible (this has proved to be more complicated than I originally thought)
I’m sure I’ll be adding to this list in the future but suffice to say, this book has vital principles that I’ve put to great use in design already.
Oddly enough, this was sentiment shared between myself and a former superior - I occasionally had little critique to offer (and vice versa) because we were in different roles and knew we couldn’t do better than the other but it was great for our working relationship - it built trust, value and respect relatively quickly!
My positive sentiments about the book remain the same. The principles still apply and I have examples to back them up now! When I read this book for the first time while at Georgia Tech, I didn’t get to sit with it as much as I did reading it again in 2023; revisiting the foundations and definitions of the various fields of design has really helped me make sense of job titles and how mature a given company’s design presence is.
I also enjoyed getting to read chapter 6 (design thinking) over again after being able to apply the process in the real world. While at Georgia Tech, they constantly stressed that things wouldn’t be neat and tidy in the real world and this has rung true. Additionally, being able to look back at what the basic process ought to generate has also remained true: design centered around the individual.
I’ll probably re-read this book every few years moving forward. I also look forward to reading some of Don Norman’s other works.
10/10.
