Do I need to think about user needs if my users have to use my service? We hear a variation of this regularly ... Have you experienced situations where your organisation is resistant to thinking about the needs of users who have to do something? Read more good.services/writing/do-i...

We're about to start our school winter holidays. Before we go, we wanted to let you know our course syllabus for 2026* In addition to online courses, we have an exciting new book launching in summer, so we'll be touring across 2026. More on that soon... 😉 See all our courses on good.services

We've written about the 5 things that are needed in any scenario to create an organisation that can design and deliver services well This is for all the people stepping into leading service design, whether it's in their title or not. good.services/writing/comm...

Most bad services don't happen deliberately. We've written more about what to do when bad service design is deliberate. good.services/writing/what...

Leadership of service design can come in many different forms. We've written about service design leadership and our new course. 🗓️ good.services/writing/what...

What have bathrooms got to do with service design? Author of Good Services Lou Downe, and our school director reflect on lessons in service design from bathrooms. good.services/writing/lessons-about-service-design-from-bathrooms

What makes a bad service? In preparation for our new book, Bad Services, we started thinking about the key patterns in bad services Beyond the user experience, much of the reasons for bad services sit with how the org runs them What do you think? good.services/writing/rwfx...

When you are designing a service, how do you develop your first concepts and come up with ideas for improving existing services? We wanted to find a way to help teams work together to develop ideas on making their services work for people good.services/writing/deve...

Most services don’t fail because they’re missing tech. They fail because people can’t use them. A good service doesn’t make you work hard to find it. It doesn’t leave you guessing, or feeling stupid for asking. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2PT...

Good Services need designed. Our intro level course on Good Services takes place on the 17th September If you were wondering if this course is for you, here's Lou, author of Good Services to talk you through the course www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuxV...

Service literacy is a term we come back to often We think it's important organisations see their services, then recognise what outcomes they are helping them to achieve, whether purpose, policy or financial. It's an old post but something we come back to daily good.services/writing/why-...

Designing Sustainable Services is back! Two half days, 11th and 12th November. Learn how to reduce the impact of your work on the planet and design sustainable and climate resilient services good.services/designingsus...

Why do Services fail? When services work, we rarely notice the design. Good service design should lead to a frictionless joined up user experience, no matter what ‘front door’ you come at it from Enjoy this talk from the archives, thanks to brilliant Camp Digital www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wve...

Want to know if your service is actually delivering a good service? The Good Services Scale helps teams reflect on how well their service works for real people—based on the 15 principles of good service design. 👉 good.services/the-good-services-scale

Full Stack Service Design is a model to help people break services down into the parts that make them and understand how all of these parts impact the user experience. Services are made up of thousands of tiny, often accidental design decisions. Read more on sarah-drummond.com/full-stack-s...

The brilliant Kev Mears who joined our Agile Service Design Course this year, sent us these wonderful sketch notes from the course. It's so great to see the course we run reflected back at us and see the takeaways.

Sometimes services don’t work the way we hope — not because people aren’t trying, but because the service itself is hard to see In this talk, Lou Downe shows how making services visible and designing them end-to-end can save everyone time and frustration. 🎥 Watch the talk: youtu.be/QoN9tYpbB-k

For me, at the heart of this test and learn approach was always a readiness to observe, learn, adapt the design, and repeat. Wrote about design for @theschoolofgood.bsky.social on test and learn for organisations this week, felt good to revisit old work good.services/writing/test...

How to ‘Test and Learn’ in service design At the heart of test and learn approaches is a readiness to observe, learn, adapt the design, and repeat. We're written about how we take a test and learn approach to whole services good.services/writing/test-and-learn

Join us for Making the Case for Service Design: Learn how to communicate the value of user-centred change and build a compelling financial pitch to gain investment and buy in for designing good services 🗓️ Next course on 7th October

Recently I learned that my favourite bookmark service was closing, pocket. It got me thinking about the questions I think about when a decision is made to close a product or service down, what would you add? good.services/writing/closing-a-service

Good Services are only as strong as their weakest link Services are impacted by everything our organisation does and how it operates. If something we're doing from a way we evaluate performance to how we fund services doesn't work, it will impact the end user Get this poster on good.services/shop

Learn how to create effective relationships that enable good service design and delivery to happen in spite of organisational siloes or uneven power dynamics Our next course is on 1st October on GMT time good.services/stakeholder-...

Designing Good Services covers the principles of what makes a Good Service. Demystify what makes a good service, helping you to identify problems in the design of services and understand what can be done to improve them Next course coming up on the 17th September good.services/designing-go...

If we designed products and services to reduce online harm or support people when they experience it, what might this look like? Recent work we did with @parentzone.org.uk looked at online financial harms in games and how parents make decisions on games for their children.

Good Services are designed Get the poster on our shop good.services/shop/p/good-...

We're in summer recess taking a break and refreshing our courses. This means going through our feedback to make improvements and learning what really lands for people. We think a surprise for people coming into the courses was how valuable spending time thinking about what services are

Great to be in the #servicegazette with a new version of our article on Austerity #servicedesign and support the printed version of the paper medium.com/the-service-... Thanks @karakane-kk.bsky.social @martinjordan.com for including us

I wrote about developing ideas in Service Design for @theschoolofgood.bsky.social and releasing a free set of cards for you to use to help you develop ideas for new and existing services. good.services/blog/develop...

What are the different fidelity levels you're designing at in Service Design? There's the What - The overall offer, what your service does, the outcomes Then there's the How - How that offer is delivered, ensuring it's accessible, usable, deliverable good.services/blog/plugs-o...

We're revisiting 'What is Service Design' from Smashing Magazine podcast with our founder Lou Downe Thanks to Drew McLellan for the interview! podcast.smashingmagazine.com/episodes/wha...

🇨🇦🇺🇸 Canada and East USA time zone friends! 🇨🇦🇺🇸 We have courses on Mountain Standard Time coming up! Last call: Designing Good Services (1st May) Coming up: Stakeholder leadership (13th May) Making the Case for Service Design (24th June) good.services/internationa...

You asked us for courses on different timezones so we delivered! We have international courses coming up in Mountain Standard Time. This time on mountain standard time so if you’re in the U.S, Canada, South America it might suit you! good.services/internationa...

Happy New Year everyone! Here at the school we're getting ready for a new year of training covering service design, organisational strategy, user centred design and customer experience. Coming up in 2025, a 🧵

8 days left for submitting to the Global Service Design Salary report for 2025 An important bit of data collection from Marc Fonteijn on the discipline and industry www.servicedesignjobs.com?fluent-form=14

Great to have Stephen Mccarthy come and give his time at our Getting into Service Design event last month Here he is on sharing your transferable skills when applying for roles in design If you missed our event, you can watch it back here good.services/blog/getting...

We're back! In our 6th episode of the Dead Ends, the school have gone all luxury We talk about what makes a service luxurious? Sarah mentions the romans (again), Lou chats sumptuary laws and what happens when we apply luxury principles to public services good.services/deadendspodc...

Getting into service design can be hard, and it is the question we're asked the most So we put on an event to start unpicking it. The video is live now. Super helpful tips from our speakers, and more events likely to come. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2jQ...

“A tool is only as good as its user” The Good Service Scale by @theschoolofgood.bsky.social / @loudowne.bsky.social is a great tool to reflect on how well your service is currently performing, as well as a great conversation starter for teams who are looking to improve their live services. (1/3)

How do you know the end of the year is coming in the world of design? It's our last course of 2024! A popular 1 day course on introductions to Good Services and thinking about how services work and get made. Spaces still available December 5th good.services/school/stake...

Our autumn newsletter just dropped! good.services/campaigns/vi... ✏️ We launched a new course for 2025: Service Design Leadership 📅 All our 2025 dates are live and we've a few last places on our 2024 courses

How do you make the case for service design when there might be a million other competing priorities? The answer is often making a financial case for the work we’re doing. Meeting budget constraint with business case. good.services/blog/6e1b8zc...

Service Design is mostly pitching for your ideas most of the time to get the approval, time, resource or the funding you need to develop your service and meet user needs.

"The real issue here, around austerity service design, is that we're expecting essentially panicked organizations to make long term decisions. That is really, really difficult to do" Dead Ends Episode 5 is out, Austerity Two parter; good.services/deadendspodc... good.services/deadendspodc...

We've had an increase in enquiries for training on different time zones. We've spun up a form to let us know where you're based and what you're interested in. Then we MAY plot a tour near you, at the very least, a course on your time zone. Let us know! good.services/blog/plottin...

We've moved in to the house of Bluesky. You can find everyday musings on Good and Bad services here. Nice to meet you all!