## Introduction to the Guest and Topic

**Daniele:** Today, we have a lovely guest with us who will explore the question of service design books. Which ones you should read to relax in a lovely summer break, which ones to read if you want to get into service design, which ones to read if you want to be the best nerd in service design.

And we will speak about all of that with. Arun. 

## Arun's Background and Initiatives

**Daniele:** Arun is a service design enthusiast and the co-founder of the service design book club community. He runs also a few other initiatives and he, I'm sure he will share all of that with you. He's really a service designer who has over 10 years of experience in design, research, prototyping, workshop, facilitation, the whole drill.

And he has worked both in like the typical consultancy, stuff like. Ey and even but also on the other side, stuff like IBM. So he knows the both sides of the service design world, which is something that I deeply appreciate. But one thing that's brought us in together, Arun and myself through the lovely things of internet is that he's also a big community lover.

We are the co organizer of the online service design book club. And he does a lot of other things. For example, you can find him on a DP list where he is doing mentoring and I'm sure you have seen many of the other initiatives he's doing online. So it's really a pleasure for me to have today this conversation with Arun.

So again, Arun, big pleasure to have you here today. 

**Arun:** Thank you so much, Daniel, for the wonderful introduction, and thank you everyone who's just joined, irrespective for time zones. I hope you find this very useful and interesting session. Thank you once again. 

**Daniele:** Thanks. And one thing that I want to note, which is a thing that I try to do every time is to remind to each of us that this is all done by volunteers on their free time and with preparation that is done on their free time.

And so obviously, be it's always a good reminder that we will be extremely thankful to all the people who have made this happen today for the committee. 

## The Service Design Book Club

**Daniele:** But hey I'd like to start with one question with you. For you, Arun, which is the classical question that I like to ask, which is, when you go to a birthday party, how do you present 

**Arun:** yourself?

Okay. That's a great question. I would say my short answer is I solve problems of different scope with different stakeholders, and that's where I just stop. I don't bring in any titles or labels. 

**Daniele:** Yeah, so you escape the trap of the word service design. I you do that very well.

Yeah. Thank you. I see we, we all have that like that big problem. And if I was the guy in the room, who would come next to you with my beer and say, ah, but he didn't tell you because he is way too humble. He's doing this thing service design book club. What would you then tell about it?

**Arun:** I would say it's a wonderful and a safe space for people to. Learn and widen the perspectives from different topic areas that's adjacent into service design because it's tough to say that, okay, this is the service design book, service design as a. Field comprises of many topics.

So the book club is a safe place where I invite authors who have written topics that's more relevant to service design, to share their perspectives, and also we. Invite the attendees to ask questions and, deepen their curiosity as well. So we host this once a quarter.

It's an online event, and if you're curious about the service design book club, all you have to do is just do a Google search service design book club. And the first result takes you to the website and people could just follow a newsletter to be updated of the upcoming events. 

Yeah. 

**Daniele:** And, you, you teased to me right before the recording that there is a quite cool guest for the next one in in October, I think. Can you maybe tell us a little bit, bit more about what's coming up? 

**Arun:** Yeah, definitely. So the next book club event is happening on. October 3rd week, and the guest speaker, he has co-authored a book.

The title of the book is A Bonfire Moment, and the book is more about how to solve collaboration challenges while working in a startup. Now, what really attracted to me was that as service designers. Often we do not get the luxury to work in big teams. So we often work as a lone team of one or more as a consultant floating between different teams, which I feel is a little bit similar to working in a startup culture because there are lots of priorities juggle around.

So I thought, that would be a great way for potential attendees to learn how we could. Take that learnings and apply to current work. And the speaker his name is Martin Gonzales. He's a co-author and he works with the Google in the organizational behavior side. And he's helped a lot of startups funded by Google and in following a human centered way.

So I think it's gonna be an interesting conversation. I hope if you have the time please to join. 

**Daniele:** I'm sure people will be more than interested to join that that that event. One thing that I particularly like about these events is as someone who has attended them more than as a, as an author, is that it gives you the possibility.

To share a bit, like your own take about your book, where sometimes you don't get much space about saying like the nitty gritty about, oh, this is one thing that I find, which is really cool, where in the classical marketing way you have to sell the book and there you're more speaking about.

Why it's fun that this book exists. And I think these conversations are quite lovely 'cause they are not in these kind of landing pages, SEO driven content that is made to sell the book. But it is more the author speaking about why they think this book is interesting or why they hate it. Even writing the book, that is also sometimes quite of a good conversation to have.

One thing that I'd be curious I think that's a question that I get a lot of the time and I'm sure you got that question also is. 

## Recommended Books for Beginners

**Daniele:** If I'm new to service design, maybe I'm transitioning from UX to service design or I've seen some LinkedIn posts about it and I might say where do I get started?

I imagine a book could be interesting. So what books could be interesting for people who just get started or have an intuition that this could be something for them? 

**Arun:** Sure Daniel. I would recommend two books in the order that I'm saying. The first book is this is Service Design Thinking by Mark Stick and a few other authors.

And the second book is designing The Invisible by Lara Penon. So Lara Penon is a professor at the Parsons College New York. The reason why I chose these two books is like the first book that I said, this is service design thinking. It was written in 2011 or 2012 when service design was just starting and the authors were very very clear in terms of how they were seeing this emerging field.

And they clearly explained what is service design? Who are this? Service designers. And towards the end, they also share some amazing case studies. And also the last chapter talks about understanding the motivation for changing one's behavior. So I believe that book really covers a wonderful starting point.

I don't know how much, people know about this book because I think most people know it's Cousin, which is this a service design doing, which is probably published in 2018 or 19. But this is a book and this, that's one book I just still keep going back and reading. That's the first book. The second book is Designing the Invisible, and this book really lays at a very high level.

Two key sections, right? So one is okay, understanding what are the services and then what is the service design process. So there are two sections to it. It has around four to five chapters. The best part I really like about this book is that each book has, so each chapter has an interview with the and case study as well.

So it's just not theory, but you're also like, reading theory, but then you're also reading the practical side of things. So I would recommend these two books. Of course, for someone who's actually coming from a product mindset, maybe this book may. Probably, I wouldn't say leave you confused because, working in a product, you tend to see everything from a product centric mindset.

But I would say these two books would help you to zoom out at a higher level. Yeah, so the, those two books would be my recommendations. And I believe there's going to be a second edition of of Alaris book coming out soon, but I don't know the date. 

**Daniele:** Thanks so much. I really, the first recommendation is one that I have seen so much.

I feel it's really like the service design one-on-one. Could be the title of that book. I think that's a, and it has one beautiful thing which I'd like to also to point here, which is. It has a lot of kinda like the community around it. It was not just written by one person, but there was really a community of people who were engaged in co-creating that book.

And I think that's also quite an exemplary, not just the book in itself, but the production of the book is quite exemplary in in that too. But I see that we have here, some faces that, that have. A bit more experience, what do you have for them? 

## Books for Experienced Service Designers

**Daniele:** What do you have for someone you know, who has worked in service design, maybe has studied it, has a few years of experience, has maybe not yet like a black belt, but is already has a few belts.

What would you recommend to them to go like on the next level? 

**Arun:** Yeah. I have two books and there are quite a number of books, but in the interest of time, I'm just focusing on two books, and these two books focus on experimentation. So the first book talks about doing experiments individually or in a, like more a small team, which is known as the experimentation field book, right?

So that has this this five ways of running an experiment with templates. So even if you're totally new to the field of experimentation, it can really help you, right? So the five key chapters would be one is. Framing testable ideas. Second is defining or gathering evidence. Third is selecting your test.

Fourth is building the prototype, and fifth is executing, analyzing, and iterating. So what this book actually helps you is like assuming. If you're totally new to the experimentation, you could be an experienced service designer, but maybe you're from an organization perspective, the organization culture does not really give you that environment. So you may want to run this low risk experiments. So this book predominantly focuses on running experiments with the products, but I would say that you can take that learnings and then try to figure out if there's something you want to change outside of a product centric mindset, so this book is amazing. The name of the book is Experimentation Field Book, written by it has focal author. Jean Chen, Natalie Foley, and one more author and I'll share the link with you. So that's the first book. So the first book that I mentioned was talking about running experiments at a very small scale, maybe as a person of, as a team of one, as a team.

The second book I want to recommend is still focusing on the experimentation team. Team is experimentation, works by I think Stephen home Tom K. So he's an Harvard business professor. And that. Book talks about okay, how can you change the organizational culture from an experimentation perspective?

And the three key chapters that really stood out was, one is can your culture handle large scale experimentation? The second is, what happens inside a mature experimentation organization. And the third is how can you help your organization become experimentation friendly? So I really like that flow and this author gives some good examples.

As for, again, so I would say for someone who's. Trying to move up in terms of the service design mindset. This experimentation books would be a great way to get started because as service designers, we want to transform. We want to change. But when in a, in an organization, there is always this status quo and legacy rituals that can hold us back.

So for us to move directly from point A to point B may not be possible. So using experiments at low ski at a very low key level, you can slowly. Hopefully, change what you would like to see changed. 

Yeah. 

**Daniele:** Yeah. 

## Journey Management Insights

**Daniele:** I know you've been quite exploring the, this subtopic of journey management.

I know this is a passion of yours and it's also something that I've seen. Quite a few people I see it like the ninja level of journey mapping is we go from journey mapping to journey management. I know that some of the people who are behind the books services and thinking and doing are now working on a book also around journey mapping.

Do you have some recommendations around that topic that you think would be interesting to share? Or even just online resources or resources that could, people could follow or explore around, around that 

**Arun:** topic? Yeah. So when, to the best of my knowledge, there aren't much, there aren't any books about journey management.

Maybe there's one expected to come out from mark stick down in next year or so. But that being said if one were to I learn about journey management. There is this person, his name is Jamin Heman. I think he delivered a talk on journey management at the recent service design networks in New York chapter.

And he also has a blog and he's written a couple of good articles about what is journey management. The way he's written it it's a great start for someone who is who wants to get started in that field. And then if you are really looking at learning about journey management at a more deeper level, I would say can listen to the service design show episode.

Mark's mark Fontain hosted with Florian, probably it was in 2022 or 2023. So at that time, I think Florian was a service design lead at NCR, and I think he had this hundreds and thousands of journey ma journeys and how he looked at looked at that. Journeys and how we've created a journey management system.

And now I think he is scaling it at more, at a higher level at Autodesk. Then you could also look up the documentation from they do. They are a premier journey management tool smartly. They also have very good documentation on the site about journey management.

Now there is often this confusion between journey management and journey ops. So for some people they mean the same. For others it's different. But my take on it is that Journey Ops is more hands on in terms of it's more project management focused, it's more operational. Whereas journey management at a higher level is more about okay setting that strategy, the vision, the governance structures, and getting that buy-in.

So it's tough to say that there are clear differences depending upon the organization. It could go by different labels. But in terms of journey management, I really look at it as more of a project management or a strategic role, rather than doing the actual work of.

Journey mapping, so if you're a service designer and you want to move into journey management, I think the best way to start is maybe speak to agile coaches or project managers or transformation coaches in your organization. Ask them like, how do they run this large scale initiatives?

Learn how they operationalize things, and that could serve as a starting point if you. Looking to pivot to journey management as a next stop in your career. Yeah. Or even as a journey management coach. 

**Daniele:** Thank you so much. That's a lot of very good resources for people. I've put a few of the links that you were mentioning already in the chat, and we'll make sure to also have them then in the show notes.

At the end, maybe on, on kind of this topic of advanced survey design. I'd like maybe to mention also. Two publishers. One is Rosenfeld's Media that publishes a lot of very good books around ux service design and so on. I think they have very, a good level of books. For me if a book is there, I, it's like already a sign of.

Of quality. And the books are not written in a kind of too, usually not written in a too academic boring way. They have this good storytelling into them, which is also something which is quite lovely. And another one is, which is not like a publisher, but a company that publishes a few books is strategizing that you might know from the business model.

Canva, and I mentioned them just off. Swiss proudness because it's a company that comes from Switzerland and they have a lot of things. As you also mentioned around experimentation and these things. I think they are quite they have quite interesting things that are useful also for more advanced people.

But for me, there is always this thing, which is. I don't know you, but I end up discovering more about service design and non-service design things, looking at history, looking at philosophy, looking at at things that have nothing to do with service design. And usually there, there is very interesting stuff, because it's if you learn stuff about gardens from gardeners, it's one little bucket.

But then if you learn something from someone who is doing chemicals. Then you'll learn a lot about how you can also work better with your garden. 

## Non-Service Design Books for Broader Perspectives

**Daniele:** And so I would be curious, is there books that are not too service designy to design, but that you say, oh these kind of books they help with going further and they help us to be more complete in our service design perspective?

**Arun:** Sure. I can share one book. The name of the book is What's Your Problem? And this book helps people in reframing their problems. I think there are a couple of chapters that's a very interesting to me. One, there's one chapter that talks about, okay. What goes into framing your current problem?

The second is more about, okay, another chapter talks about how can we move outside of the existing frame of the problem. And third chapter is okay, once you've moved to a different reframe the problem, how can you go about changing the goals? The reason I picked this book is that irrespective if one is a service designer or not every discipline.

Solving problems, right? So some people have specific knowledge, subject matter expertise in solving a problem. So they are probably, too down or too down in the weeds when it comes to solving a problem. As service designers, I think a great value that we bring to our teams is perhaps.

Helping our stakeholders even figure out whether this is the right problem to be solved. So if we are able to influence our stakeholders saying that, okay, can we for a moment. Step outside of the frame of the problem you're trying to solve and maybe reframe. That would be a great start. And that's where I think the knowledge of systems thinking comes into play because it helps you to go to a little more higher zoom levels and you start seeing the forest for the trees and with, once you start showing them the forest, I think.

99% of the stakeholders would definitely agree that, okay, this is probably not the best problem to solve. Let's look at something else. So that's the reason I chose this book and this is a great book that's really helped me and even I am I would say still learning as I reread the book because.

As much as the book is so simple in terms of reframing the problem, getting our stakeholders that buy in involves a lot of understanding of organizational dynamics. So it's more like the tip of the iceberg. So the tip of the iceberg is like a reframe your problem, but if you really look at the below the iceberg, there are a lot of other hidden things that the service designers needed to even help stakeholders see this problem in a new light.

So that's my favorite. 

**Daniele:** Thanks so much. I will ask a last question before opening the grounds for all of you. And it's a two folded question. First there is a part which is just a seasonal which is. 

## Summer Reads and Underrated Books

**Daniele:** Any recommendations who are maybe more for a summary read, something that you say, oh, that's something that I could read, on a beach a bit lighter but still, still interesting.

And maybe do you have something which is, a bit more underrated where you say, Hey, this is a book by. Someone that maybe isn't like in a in the spotlight usually. Or maybe it's an older book or a book that just came out. Do you have either something which is a bit of a light summary read or something underrated that you'd like to put on the spotlight that people can take with them on the beach?

**Arun:** Sure. So I can give two recommendations. One is this book. The title is Designing Experiences. I don't remember the name of the authors. The reason I chose this book was this book is so it's written by two academic professors, but this book is written in such a way that anyone who is totally new to the world of experiences can really understand.

You know how experiences are created, right? Often we say, okay, we are mapping experiences. We are co-creating experiences. But if you ask everyone like, what's the definition of experience? It's quite subjective. So I would say this book is a very good read in terms of it gets into the nitty gritties of a journey touchpoint, and it's written in a language that everyone can understand.

Now, obviously, someone who is more experienced, they may find this book a little. I would say, it's probably a little below their current knowledge level, but it doesn't hurt to reread the book once again. And I would also say that this book is a great gift that you can give to your known design stakeholders, right?

For them to go onto their beaches and read this book as well. So that would be a kind of a great summer gift, summer reading gift. The second is the most underrated book that I want to re share is. The title of the book is Generations At Book. So this book is what this book says that there are different generations like baby boomers gen X millennials, gen Z.

So it talks about if in a workplace when you have these three or four different generations, how can they work collaboratively and how can properly a, gen Z. Mentor a baby boomer and, so all those things have been very good have been articulated a lot. And it's so relevant to my role as a service designer because often I get.

Mentoring conversations where, the mentee could be a little more senior to me. And sometimes the mentee is like very young. So knowing where they're coming from and helping me to tailor that coaching approach or even a coffee chat would in a really help me. So yeah, that I would say is a very underrated book.

It's Generations at Work. It's it's a second edition. I think the book focuses on. On Baby boomers, gen X, and Millennials. But after that we have the Gen Z and gen Alpha. So they have not covered these two new generations. Hopefully they'll cover that in the third edition.

**Daniele:** Thank you so much that that's good reads for for the beach.

Definitely. If you have them kids, there might be elements that can be definitely useful for that too. 

## Opening Remarks and Recommendations

**Daniele:** Thank you so much. There, these are already. Quite a few very good recommendations. And I know that you have a few links prepared for us for the end so that people can get all of that and find the, these books more easily.

## Audience Questions and Recommendations

**Daniele:** But I'd like now to open kind of the rounds to all your questions. Obviously also your recommendations, because I assume that you might have read a few books or that you have. Maybe additional thoughts about one of the questions or one of the recommendation where say, Hey, for new, for beginners, maybe this is a very interesting book or so, so please share your questions.

Your recommendations can be around service design in general, but also obviously centered around the topic of service and books and light. Summer reading is always a good recommendation. So if you are on camera, you can just unmute yourself. We're not that's many as it's summertime, so you can just unmute yourself and speak up, or I am checking the chat if you have a specific question.

## Books on Introducing Service Design and Systems Thinking

**Daniele:** So I see a question in the chat, which is, can you recommend any books on how to introduce service design to a company? And also do you have any recommendations in the field of systems thinking? 

**Arun:** Sure. I would say the answer to your first question there is this book. Written by I'm just trying to recollect the name of the author, Dave Gray who's written that Gamestorming book?

So he wrote a book. It's, I don't remember the title. It's more about how to make people say yes. Or I have to re-air look it up. But if you can just look it up online, it's very Dave Gray. So what this book says is that if someone says no to you for any request, how do you make them say yes?

So that I think is very integral because when you're trying to introduce service design, 99 percentage of the time you're gonna hear a no. So the question is like, how can you convert that no to, yes. I think the title of the book is the VP of No or something. It's a very funny title, but I don't I don't have it right now, but that's one book you could get started with.

Second, I would say also Looker. I don't have any titles right top of my mind, but if you can look at some interesting CX books. Also some books around how to get buy-in. Those would be good starting points, but I would say even before you start reading those books, it may be a good idea to first get an organizational mentor if you're working in-house.

Or if you're a consultant, maybe work with someone who knows the organization in terms of how decisions are being made currently. And then based on that, you could really look at how to get the buy-in. And perhaps a good way to get buy-in is probably start running some low key experiments, right?

Maybe, and say that, okay, this experiment adds small value. You can build it up and then build up your, your army of advocates. I remember Mark stick stone. He had written a couple of articles around scaling service design and also embedding service design. I think those articles are free.

It can be accessed to anyone, by anyone on the web. Yeah, that's, those are the articles I can think about. Right now for your first question, the second question I would say on Amazon, there are these various lightweight reads in terms of if you're new to systems thinking or or how do you apply systems thinking in your work?

So those authors are actually not, I would say very popular authors, but if you can just search for those titles on Amazon, you will see a lot of books with, which is probably like 50 to a hundred pages. And that the way they've written it, the language is so simple and easy to understand that you would really understand what system think you can, solve problems using systems thinking. Yeah. So I would say I would say look at book titles where you feel that. That the language and the content makes you feel comfortable, because often I've seen is that systems thinking is such a complex topic and the authors expect you to have a certain baseline knowledge.

If not, that book could all, so I would say what I did was I used to go a level, couple of levels below. Just make sure that I even understand even the baseline knowledge. Watch some YouTube videos and then, build up my understanding and then get into the systems side of things.

The best way to learn systems thinking is to. Take a week or a complex problem that you're currently having and then try to apply and solve. And that would be a great start. And I think a good online community is the Systems innovation community. The systems innovation hub, they're based in London, uk, but they have a very active presence on LinkedIn.

And I think the founder is from Brazil. He's based in London. So yeah, so if you need more details you can share that the details of the community. 

**Daniele:** Thank you so much. Thank you. I've just the books that you were looking for is selling to the VP of No, so That's right. I found the title and put it in the chat.

Thank you. Yeah. 

**Daniele:** And I think someone was saying something and I came in the middle. 

**Arun:** I just said thank you. Wonderful. 

## Further Recommendations and Resources

**Daniele:** And just on that a few additional recommendations on how to sell service design both in-house or outside. I think there is a good community of practitioners, which is called Circle done by Mark Fontain which is a thing that you can join where older people doing service design within.

Organizations have a lot of expertise on how to make it happen within organizations, and I'm sure there, there are some conversation on how to bring service design within and spreading it. Further, the mark has also a bit of a playbook around selling services design more. For if you're a consultant, but I imagine there are might be a few tools and ways of thinking that you can steal from them from there.

And Isabel Fringer did a webinar with us a few months ago around the idea of how to not sell services design. And that's could be I think, quite interesting also it's also a bit more on the. On the consultant side, but again, there are a few ideas that you might be able to take for yourself.

Lely has a few questions, but Arun, sorry now. 

**Arun:** Yeah, so sorry to interrupt you now. Just just following up to your last question in terms of how to sell or how to get the buying for services, and I think a good resource is this medium publication run by a service design leader. Known as Alessandra.

I think she's based in the uk, so she has this medium publication where she interviews. Different service design leaders in Europe. And most of them, most of the service design leaders were the first service designers in their organization. So it's a I think each medium publication has strong eight to 10 questions.

And I think couple of questions focus on, okay, how did you start the practice of service design? And I think that's a great resource. Because if you start reading these 10 to 11 stories, you begin to see little patterns emerge. And, these patterns are, so practical and pragmatic because these people have understood the organizational dynamics.

Yeah. And I can share the link to that medium publication as well. So yeah, that would be a good start. And Daniella probably, if it helps, you should also have Alexandra on your on one of your, design Networks, Switzerland chapters. She is amazing. She also co-founded this mega mentors website which is more similar to EADP list, but it is more focused on service design and ux UX side of things.

So anyone who wants to, have reach out or have a service design mentoring chat. On the website, there are a list of service design mentors predominantly Europe. And all you have to do is just look at their profile and if you feel that they're a good mentor, just schedule some time on the calendar and you can have a 30 minute chat for a one off chat or a recurring conversations.

**Daniele:** Thank you so much. So the full name is Alessandra Canella and you can find her on alessandra canella do medium.com, by the way. 

Yeah, that's right. 

**Daniele:** Wonderful. I see that Lely had a question. Hello, Lilly. How? 

**Leili:** Hi. Hi. Thank you. Arun you have read and hosted so many amazing authors and I am really thankful about them, about doing this.

## Discussion on Writing and Publishing Books

**Leili:** And I'm cur curious, if you were to write a book, what would it be about? Maybe it will be about service design or other topics. Yeah, I'm just curious about this. 

**Arun:** I would just focus on one topic. How does a service designer design their stakeholder experience? Because that's a short topic as well as a complex topic, and I have many layers to it from my own experience, I'm still learning.

So probably I would, the title of the book would be How to Design or Co-Design the Experience of the experience with your stakeholders or of your stakeholders, I don't know. But yeah, that's what I would really focus on. 

**Leili:** So I'm really curious to read it. Please do it. 

**Arun:** So hopefully in the future.

Thank you for asking that wonderful question. Thank you. 

**Daniele:** And, who knows? This year I'm running a first prototype of week writing session for people who are writing their first book. And and maybe, who knows? And next year you come to the Swiss Alps and and you write that book around in a lovely mony and the Swiss.

**Arun:** Definitely. Thank you for the wonderful inspiration. 

**Daniele:** And now you already have the title, that's the, oh yeah. Most difficult part. 

**Arun:** Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is only the table of contents and the book. That's all. Then it writes itself. Yeah. 

**Daniele:** Would be nice. Would be. Yeah. I see we have another question from Mariana who says hello.

## Measuring the Impact of Service Design

**Daniele:** What would you recommend for books about measuring the impact and RRI of service design interventions? 

**Arun:** Great question. I would I would think that it's tough to measure the impact of service design. As an individual discipline because service design touches many other or interacts with other disciplines in the organization.

So if it all depends upon are you trying to showcase the value of service design to your team or to the organization versus. Has your organization seen the benefit of service design? Both of them are two different questions. I'm assuming it's the latter. Has the organization seen the benefit of service design if that is the case?

Right now there aren't much books or published thought leadership articles, but I can just give you an example right off the top of my head is that, as a service designer, you might be working. O on some project to improve an experience that could be maybe a product lifecycle or it could be even a service experience.

So as you look at that ma end to end journey each different teams would have ownership of the different stages. So perhaps a great way to get started is speak to those different teams who have ownership of the different stages in the customer journey and say, okay, what is a business outcome you're aiming to achieve?

Are you trying to save money? Or increase revenue. And if you speak to maybe let's say five, let's say a journey has five stages, you may have to speak to five different teams. And then you get a sense of what their business outcomes are. And once you have that understanding of the team level OKRs, then you can ask them like, okay, I have worked with all the five teams, so what is my contribution?

That has helped in this team OKRs. And if the team says that, okay, because you've done this, we have indirectly saved X dollars or there's been a revenue increase of X dollars, you can probably quantify that and say that. This is how you've added your value. And then you can also speak to those five teams and say that, okay, how do those team OKRs layer up to the department OKRs or the business OKRs?

And if you're able to draw a little bit of that revenue mapping that would be a great way to justify the ROI and I would say that. It's always good to work with someone who has deep knowledge of the finance and the revenue side of organizations so that you know they can guide you.

Because sometimes it's so difficult to map the immediate impact of your service design work. Maybe you're running a design sprint, maybe you're running a corporation workshop, or maybe you're running a service program. But how does that matter? So you have to. Follow some sort of a trail saying that, okay, I've done this is what the team took away from this, and this is how it's impacting the profitability.

And certain teams may not have much responses to it, so you may have to go maybe one level higher, a couple of levels higher. Get that details and then it takes back and forth some time, right? It's gonna take some back and forth conversations because the more people at higher level, they may be wondering, okay, why do you why you as a service designer need access to that?

It's more sensitive and confidential, so you have to probably, build that trust and the competence with your immediate team and those teams vouch for you saying that, okay, the service designer is actually helping us save money or so, and that is a long-winded answer, but yeah, 

**Daniele:** but detailed and and lovely and it's very, thanks so much.

You're welcome. Any other questions from the audience?

As you're preparing yourself, oh no, I see that Le has a question. Le. 

**Leili:** Yeah, I have many questions. Sorry. 

## Challenges in Publishing Service Design Case Studies

**Leili:** Usually a trend or challenge emerged in design and the books and resources follow to address it. I'm curious to know that in your experience, how reasonable has the speed of publications have been in recent years?

Is the pace I mean if you think the pace hasn't been fast enough or what do you believe are the main reasons that it is not fast enough? There are many like topics that are not in books or resources about it. 

**Arun:** Yeah, great question. I would say first is people learn best through case studies.

And for a successful service design case study, depending upon the complexity of the business problem, the nature of the organization, a case study it could take anywhere between three to five years for a service design project to be successful, right? The second is that most of the service design.

Projects are strategic and transformational in nature which means that it's, how would I say, I'm just trying think the right word I'm trying to say here, is it is confidential to the organization because that's how they separate themselves from their competitors. So no one wants to share those case studies out there in public because they are in the process of distinguishing themselves from their competitors.

Which means that there are two things. One is the lack of case studies, second by time. If someone decides to publish a case study, it takes much longer time because they have to get the approval from a lot of people from their organizations, maybe the VP level or the senior leadership level. And if those people have changed roles or moved on from different organizations, the bureaucratic process of getting approvals is.

So long that people don't take time to just go, they would prefer to add service design to their portfolio and move on, so that probably explains the gap. And second, it's also usually the new topics or trends actually coming, and it takes almost like two to three years for.

That book to be published because there's the authors, they have to collect a lot of additional information. So the best way what I do is when I hear about something, I try to Google and I try to also find out if there are some just in books that talk about this specific topic and then see how I can map that in terms of relevance to service design.

Because I think one. One tip I can give is that there are a lot of hidden nuggets of wisdom in other areas and disciplines. The only thing is that sometimes it's not visible because we go and start searching with the service design label in mind. If you could just take a step back and say, okay, how did this discipline, or how did that team solve that problem?

I think you would be exposed to different ways of working. And then at some point of time, the next question to ask is, okay, now I will learn this. How is that relevant to my service design work? And that comes with practice. And the more people you speak to. I think they would give you more ideas, so yeah, the short answer is lack of access to case studies and it's also the interest of the service designers to publish those case studies.

'cause they're probably held back by confidentiality reasons.

**Leili:** Thank you. That was a progress. 

**Arun:** Thank 

**Daniele:** you. And there is a quite a beautiful thing with books. Which is both can be seen as a curse but there's also a blessing, which is it takes time to put them out and it takes energy to put them out. So it has a filtering value of, it's easy to write a newsletter, it's easy to write a LinkedIn post, a museum article, but it's hard to write a book.

And therefore the things that get in books. Are made by people who really want these ideas to go forward. It doesn't mean that they are always good ideas, but at least, there is already a bit of a filtering of motivation level and how hard people can spend time on a thing that will usually make no money.

And and that takes a lot of time. And so that's also a good thing. And, I was quite inspired by someone who said that they stopped watching live 24 hour news and decided to read books instead. 'cause they, that person said it takes time before things arrive in a book, and so we have more distance with what happened.

Once it arrived in the book. And so that's an also an interesting take about the quality that sometimes books have. Not all books obviously, but that's, they have a bit more of this kind of long time like the books about how AI really is useful, blah, blah, blah. They take time, to come out obviously.

And that's quite interesting, I think. So that may be a thing that could be quite interesting also to explore. 

**Arun:** Yeah, it's, I would say, Daniel, sorry to interrupt. I would say, writing a book and publishing it is as good as probably, directing a movie. Not at that level, but there is a lot of team effort in all, and there are many co-authors.

Everyone has different priorities so you'd have to really balance it out. Other, otherwise what you have to do is maybe just start publishing chapters one maybe every six months and not focus on the book per se. Like every six months publish one chapter, so maybe by end of three years you have five chapters and then you can say, yeah, this is a book.

Absolutely. 

**Daniele:** I think we have time for one rapid buyer. Last question.

Good. Then I have one last one for you. Arun. 

## Reading Routines and Final Thoughts

**Daniele:** What's your reading routine? How did you get to read all of these books? 

**Arun:** Great question. I was trying to not answer that, but you've put me on a spot over here, so I would say. When I started the book club, I had more ample time to read the books, cover to cover.

But now with my with my busy schedule, I try to just read specific chapters and then and then I just make a kind of a note on my Kindle or if it's a, hard copy that, maybe I'll come back to it later. So what I do is I just look at the TOC and just make a note that I read these three, four chapters and these are the remaining chapters that has to be read.

And I may come back to it later, but, or sometimes I may not. So it's, I would say it's more about a specific topic or a specific problem I'm trying to learn and, yeah. It's more like just in time reading, but definitely for the book clubs events I read the book end to end and it's I don't have a specific daily routine, but it's more like an ad hoc that on certain days, on certain weekends, I complete couple of chapters and then I'll not touch the book for the next couple of weeks.

And that's how it's going on. Yeah. 

**Daniele:** I really love it. I love how, it's taking out the kind of preciousness of, oh, I have to read the book. The whole thing from the start. Even reading the ISBN number to the kind of end. And saying, Hey, this is a book. I can grab the parts that are most relevant for me now, and I know where the book is in the bookshelf, and so if I want to go further I still can go in it.

I think that's a very beautiful way of seeing also some, especially some business books and practical or some practice books more as magazines where you go in and grab elements that you study really, and other elements that you just. Read through and then say, oh, that's something that I'm gonna go in deeply or not.

But that's a lot of questions that you have answered. That's a lot of books for your summer readings I'm sure that there will be at least one book that you might be able to buy and maybe just open the table of content and maybe just. Select one chapter to read for the end of the summer. I think if we can go up to there, that's already a great commitment.

But for now, I want to say a big thank you to you, Arun. I know how much energy you put in hosting these book clubs how much energy you put into also sharing your knowledge with the rest of the community. You always do it in a very humble and and very professional way, and I really appreciate that and I know how much energy, passion and time is behind that.

And for that, I want to say a big thank you also. I appreciate how prepared you are always for these sessions. So thank you a lot for dance. 

**Arun:** Thank you so much, Angela, for the invite and it's great that, we share similar mental models of thinking and really appreciate that. And thank you to all the wonderful attendees.

We've joined from different time zones. I hope it's been a very useful and engaging conversation. 

**Daniele:** Thanks to all of you who have shared your questions with us and who have come today. And again, a huge thank you to Arun for his librarian quality of being able to have a book for every question. Have a wonderful evening.

Cheers. Bye-bye. 

Thank 

**Daniele:** you, 

Daniel.