February 2025
Service Design
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“A team of one challenges the mighty forces of the status quo, inertia, and other people’s ways of doing things”
Despite this being a Rosenfeld title, I assumed it would be a guide to navigating some of the politics of being a UX team of one. Rather, this is a crash course of UX as a whole. Leah Buley starts at UX’s inception and provides a macro-level analysis of the various subfields within UX and how people may end up in a role like it.
Throughout the book, there are a few tips I found to resemble what I thought the entirety of the book was going to be about; some of them include:
1) Use the “alternative close” approach: instead of asking permission to do something (ex. conduct research), provide 2 realistic alternatives
2) Know when things are ‘good enough:’ things will inevitably be imperfect
3) Find ways to gain access and visibility across departments
4) Turn the rubber stamp into an opportunity: when giving a seal of approval, suggest doing some quick guerilla testing
5) Document everything: create mini case studies of projects that detail impact and complexity
6) Gather information about what matters to various colleagues/stakeholders: how can I make everyone content?
7) Include non-design stakeholders in the design process as much as possible: promote visibility and efficacy/inclusivity
The second part of the book outlines 27 methods that represent the end-to-end design process; Buley discusses the advantages of each. Overall, this section was somewhat of a review for me but I still felt like I learned new things. At times, some of these methodologies can be made to be overly complicated; Buley did a fantastic job at pointing out that there is no reason for this to be the case:
“There's a popular misconception that this kind of research has to take a lot of time and effort to be done right. That's not the case. Whatever enables you to validate designs quickly with real people and gain confidence that the design is moving in the right direction is fair game.”
4 of the 27 methods, in particular, stood out to me; they are:
Otherwise known as ‘stakeholder interviews,’ the listening tour is simply gathering information about what matters most to colleagues. In other words, it sets a direction for prioritization early on.
Otherwise known as ‘talking to users by whatever means necessary.’ Identify pre-existing channels within the organization to gain access to users if need be.
The culmination of individual sketching results in a sketchboard; it serves as a way to gain a birds eye view of the entire product. What patterns emerge and how can the team use those as a way to build cohesion and harmony?
This one was entirely new to me. Essentially this is a ‘no-holding-back design critique.’ This session is specifically aimed to allow non-designers the forum and ability to call things for what they seem without potential for judgment.
Buley ends the book by discussing, in some ways, the most important part of being a UX team of one: educating and building awareness of UX within the organization:
“The happiest and most successful teams of all talk about the same thing: having the support of peers and leaders. It isn’t required that your manager and colleagues are also UX aficionados. But it is important that colleagues are supportive of what you’re trying to accomplish, and that they have an open mind.”
She then outlines a few methods of how to do so including: bathroom UX, mini case studies, peer to peer learning communities and lastly pyramid evangelism. Pyramid evangelism was also a new term for me; it is simply a term for describing the process of building relationships and opportunities at all levels of the organization.
I believe this is a great book for someone who is in a company-specific role and looking to make a pivot into a UX role; specifically, this feels like a great book for someone at an organization who is looking to create a UX role from scratch for themselves. There were a few times while reading where I felt that the book was showing its age and needed a new edition (which I imagine is in the works); in the prototyping section, the tools listed were very much relics of the past and there was no mention of Figma (this is to be expected). The principles and ‘methods’ discussed still remain the same and have withstood the test of time.
At the end of each method, Buley provided tips for if designers are working remotely; I found this to be especially helpful and definitely a bit ahead of its time (circa 2013). Every single one of said tips is still highly applicable today for designers and some even for non-designers. A few of the method templates were also especially helpful: the UX Project Plan and the Learning Plan provided fantastic and yet very simple templates. Most of my designing has been done remotely so the section on sketching was a fun shift; Buley clearly listed the advantage of sketching with paper/pen that I often forget about: sketching forestalls perfectionism, engages others and invites broader conceptual feedback.
Overall, I would recommend this book to more junior-level designers or to those in similar but adjacent fields looking to find areas of overlap for their teams (ex. product managers). This was an enjoyable read and leaves the reader thinking: what 3-5 things do you want to be true about your work in 5 years?
