 There are many books out there that can help you to become a better service designer. In this video I'll be talking about three books that have had a great impact on how I practice service design and they are probably not the books that you are thinking about. If you're curious what they are, stick around because that's what we'll be talking about in this video. Let the show begin! Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This show is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business and the way to do that is to keep on learning and keeping up with what's going on in our field and there are so many resources, videos like these but of course also books that can help you to become a better service designer. The big problem is I think that in a way to become a better service designer is not to just read the books that are about service design, of course it's important to learn how to use all the different tools and methods and become a really good craftsman but that's not enough I think to really stand out and to really create those services that have an impact on people. As I know it's really easy to get caught up in discussions about the nooks and crannies of service design and design thinking but the truth is our clients don't really care about that. So the big question is do you want to become the person who's the very best at creating customer journey maps or do you want to become the person who's really good at solving business challenges through a design driven and a human centered approach? If that's the last part then I've got three books for you that I can really recommend you should read. So the first book I want to talk about is the Experience Economy by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine. Joe has been on the show in one of the previous episodes I think I'll link to it here or here and this book has really changed my perspective on what it means to design services and what it means to design products. Up to today I still use one of their key models in this book it's the progression of economic value where they explain what the differences are between products and services from an economic offering perspective and that is really important I think because when we talk to clients we have to show them and explain to them that it's really something different to design products versus designing services and we can have the discussion about in which type of business you're in. So this book really helped me to understand what is it that we're doing as service designers where is our added value and really again from a business from an economic offering perspective. Really a classic I think this is the second or third edition I'll link to it down below in the description so you can get it and if you haven't done so already check out the episode with Joe who was on the show not so long ago. So a classic I must read for any service designer. Now tell me have you ever gone through the design process and in the end come up with solutions that are really good where everybody agrees that they are valuable and should be pursued it but the company doesn't act upon them. I think we've all been in this situation and it's a common theme within the service design field how do you turn ideas into action how do you implement them and if you want to understand why companies don't act upon certain ideas and do act upon others here's a book I really can recommend it's called the knowing doing gap by Bob Sutton and Jeffrey Farah how smart companies turn knowledge into action and I think this is a must read for any service designer because it helps us to understand why companies do things they do and one of the things that really stuck with me from this book is they're explaining for instance how companies do the things that get measured I think they call it what gets measured gets done and that has been really impactful on how I approach my design process and the conversations I have with my clients so from the very start I try to understand what their measurements are how do they measure success and try to incorporate this into my design process but they've identified I think in total five or six drivers of the things that make companies act upon knowledge that make them act upon ideas so if you if you want to increase the chance that your solutions actually get implemented that they see the day of light this is a must read book that will definitely help you as a service designer the third and final book I want to share with you is the story factor by Annette Simmons again a classic from 2002 and this book is really about the art of storytelling and the thing is we've won projects we've won pitches not by the fact that we've been able to sort of scientifically prove that our past projects have impacted the bottom line or that we've presented hard numbers effect and facts but through the through the through the way we've been able to share stories about those projects and the thing is we've been telling stories as humans for a way longer time than we've been using statistics to to share knowledge and to persuade and influence people to to do something and I think we as a service design community can really benefit from understanding how stories work understanding how we can structure them understand how we can find them and collect them and this book is great to do that it helps you to really think in stories and see stories everywhere and the way this has influenced my practice as a service designer is that we're now incorporating storytelling in every aspect of our process even before our project starts so like I said in the pitch toward a client we think about how and which kind of stories we're going to tell throughout the project we're thinking how are we going to share the stories that emerge through their project and in the end we also think okay are we going to make our PowerPoint presentation where we share sort of the end result or are we going to tell a story about the journey we went through in a project so storytelling is really woven into the way we practice service design at 31 false and I think again we as a service design community have so many stories stories are the thing that sort of drives us and they are everywhere we should just be more conscious of them and learn how to share and tell them and how we can influence our clients through storytelling and this the story factor is I think a classic and a really great book that will help you to to get on your way and there is much more about storytelling or many books on storytelling but I think this is sort of lays out the fundamentals again the story factor by Annette Simmons I'll link to the book down below in the description like I said in the beginning I think it all comes down to the question do you want to become the person who's the very best at making customer journey maps or do you want to become the person that's the best at solving business challenges through a design driven a human-centered approach in the most effective and efficient way that depends I guess on which kind of books you read and these were some of the books that have influence greatly influenced how I practice service design and I'm really curious which books have impacted your practice leave a comment down below and share your thoughts your books and ideas and talking about storytelling I have a free course that is called how to explain service design in plain English you can check it out here or here so if you're interested in storytelling that's a great course to follow thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing the next video