The big news that I am late blogging about is that Ben Reason, Lavrans Løvlie and I have completed the second edition of our book Service Design: From Insight to Implementation!
It comes out officially on October 21st, but you can pre-order now to get a 15% discount. If you already bought the first edition from Rosenfeld Media, you should receive and e-mail from them for a discount off the second edition.
Should you bother to buy the second edition?
Obviously, we think so!
It’s a very odd experience to write a second edition, akin to re-touching a spot on the wall and then deciding you need to blend it in, then paint the whole wall, then, while you are at it, re-paint the room.
Lavrans started us off with the challenge to cut material out that felt outdated or general design methods that had become so commonplace we felt it made more sense to reference other books.
The biggest advantage of looking back over the past 10-15 years is that the discipline has grown enormously and we now have a whole load of case studies to draw upon. We’ve updated almost all the case studies in the book and revisited the one in Chapter 1 about the insurance company Gjensidige, for which Lavrans met up with the now ex-CEO and CMO to talk about what was successful in the intervening years.
We also have a bunch of new sidebars from guests who really add to the knowledge shared in the book. And, of course, we recognise the rise of product-led organisations. Product, as we know it now, was really only emerging back in the first edition days. (Yes, I know, everybody has re-written their resumés to say they were doing product in the 90s. They weren’t. I was there.)
We updated all of the chapters in one way or another and moved some material around. The more method heavy chapters around blueprinting and the service value proposition have been updated, as has measuring services.
There is a new chapter on organisational change, one of the real missing pieces from the first edition. And we’ve updated the final chapter on future challenges (as well as taking a look back on what predictions or wishes turned out to be accurate or utopian).
All in all, it’s definitely a new book, but we tried to keep as much of the original flavour and, dare I say, wisdom, while we were updating it. We’re all very pleased with how it has turned out.
If you do buy it and read it, please let us know what you think. And we’ll love you even more if you would write an Amazon review. As you know, we are all slaves to the algorithm these days and it really helps.
