Book Juice | Good Services by Lou Downe

Book Juice is a personal space for me to bottle up and distill the tastiest learnings from non-fiction books relating to design, business and other interesting topics that I read and want to implement in my life and work. Please note: this juice contains pulp — my interpretations! For pure juice, see the author’s original texts.

This book is…

A compact breakdown of key principles for designing a good service, explored alongside a spectrum of public and private sector case studies.

The juicy bits

A good service is:

1. Easy to find
2. Clearly explains its purpose
3. Sets the expectations a user has of it
4. Enables a user to complete the outcome they set out to do
5. Works in a way that is familiar
6. Requires no prior knowledge to use
7. Agnostic of organisational structures
8. Requires as few steps as possible to complete
9. Consistent throughout
10. Has no dead ends
11. Usable by everyone, equally
12. Encourages the right behaviours from users and staff
13. Responds to change quickly
14. Clearly explains why a decision has been made
15. Makes it easy to get human assistance

Types of user expectations and how to meet them

In 3. Sets the expectations a user has of it, we learn how to understand, meet or clarify expectations your user has of your service by categorising expectations into three types:

• Universal expectations | There are some basic expectations that all users will have about your service. If you’re a certification provider, it might be that “If I sit an exam, I’ll receive results”. These expectations should always be met.
• Assumed expectations | These expectations relate to anything that the user might not know about your service. Again imagining that your service is certifications, an example would be “If I sit an exam, I’ll receive results within a month”. These expectations need to be set proactively, or the user will default to their own assumptions (sometimes based on past experiences).
• Outlier expectations | Users’ positive experiences with other services might set outlier expectations. For example “If I sit an exam, I’ll receive the results instantly”. With time, these expectations may eventually become assumed expectations and should therefore be monitored.

Catalogue the assumptions your service makes about its users

In 6. Requires no prior knowledge to use and in 10. Has no dead ends we learn about the value of reviewing your service for any assumptions it makes about its users. This helps to prevent dead ends in experiences.

For example, a service may operate in a way that presumes you have used it before and know how it works, or it might presume you have access to something, for example a stable internet connection.

• Review your service and catalogue the assumptions it makes about users | Pick apart your whole service and explore it through the lens of “What are we assuming about our user?” Keep a list of everything you find, such as presumptions about a user’s knowledge, access to technology or past experiences.
• Categorise these assumptions | Some assumptions will be a fixed part of the service that cannot be changed, whereas others might be addressable either through adjusting how your service supports the user or removing the assumption entirely.
• Address or remove the assumptions| You could address the assumption, for example by informing your user that you will need a mobile device to access your service. Or you might change your service to work on desktop devices as well as mobile devices, removing the assumption that your user can access a mobile phone.

This process should help you to minimise the number of requirements your service makes of its users.

Orchestrate the rhythm and tempo of your service

“Don’t just design the steps of your service, design the steps in between them”
- Lou Downe

In 8. Requires as few steps as possible to complete, we discover how services are made up of steps that the user takes, with each step corresponding to a decision the user has to make.

In this metaphor, the number of steps in your service makes the rhythm and the speed that these steps happen forms the tempo.

Different parts of your service might happen at a different tempo.

For example, you can design the speed at which different parts of your service progress to give the user ample time to make important decisions by slowing the service down at those critical moments.

Services can be transactional or involved, depending on the level of conscious decision making that is needed throughout the journey, or they might have a combination of transactional and involved stages.

Doing your taxes is an example of a transactional service, where the user wants to complete their journey with the bare-minimum number of steps.

An involved service might be something like choosing how you want to plan for retirement, where you have to make big decisions that need a lot of reflection time.

A blend of the two would be booking a trip. The deciding where to go part will take time and require some thinking, but booking and paying once you decide should be a doddle.

• Identify “transactional” and “involved” parts of your service | Which parts of the service should be made minimal-effort for the user? Which parts might be better for the user if they happen more slowly?
• Find decision points and match them to steps in a users journey | Make sure there is only one decision per step, and make sure there are no steps without decisions
• Review the tempo of your journey | Speed up inconsequential parts of your journey and slow down the parts that need thought and consideration

Outcome-focused thinking should be embedded into every layer of your service

In 12. Encourages the right behaviours from users and staff, we explore how services can nudge behaviours (for better and for worse).

Setting targets is one way that organisations use to change behaviour in their staff, but done badly, this can have unintended consequences. The case study for this relates to the Blair-era NHS target for all GPs to “make sure people can get an appointment within 48 hours”, which resulted in GP surgeries making it impossible to book ahead and allowing people only to book with short notice. While technically hitting their targets, people were left unable to get appointments for weeks.

“You might set out with the best of intentions, but subtle things about the way your service works, is funded, or the way you encourage your staff to do a good job, can all have an impact on whether you reach that goal, for you and your users.”
- Lou Downe

• Review your desired outcomes against every part of your service and organisation| Business models may incentivise behaviour that runs counter to your desired outcomes. The same is true for the structure of your organisation, staff targets, and how your users interact with your service.

Your service should recognise and adapt to both direct and indirect changes

In 13. Responds to change quickly, we learn about the different types of changes that your service might need to account for and the ways it might respond.

• Changes that affect your service indirectly| Users should be able to change absolutely anything relating to themselves on your service…but you also shouldn’t presume anything about them, and your service should be flexible enough to handle any changes they don’t tell you about. An appalling example of this is the standard information that the Financial Conduct Authority require pensions providers to send out with every new pensions account. If you’re female they send you a forecast of your pension income which assumes you’re a straight and happily married to a man who is slightly older than you and earning more. (By the way, if you complain about this, you’ll receive an instant cheque in the post because even the pension providers acknowledge that’s a outdated view of the world…)
• Changes that affect your service directly | Some changes need to be reflected in the core functionality of the service. For these changes, you should give users the option of making the changes at the point at which they are relevant. An example of this is when booking a doctor’s appointment in the UK, you are asked to confirm your address and phone number, because this is the moment at which it actually matters.

Who should read this book?

Everyone who plays any part of a team that makes or delivers services. This book is filled cover-to-cover with valuable lenses to peek through in the service design process, and only takes a few hours to read.