Ask me anything – Authors of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation
This video is featured in the Rosenfeld Authors Answer Your Questions playlist.
Summary
Service designers, join us for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) with two of the authors of the recently released second edition of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation: Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason. Together, they will share their experiences in service design, how the field has changed since the first edition of the book was released more than ten years ago, and what’s in store for the future.
Key Insights
-
•
The second edition connects service design closely with digital product thinking, reflecting its rise since 2013.
-
•
Digital products are often service experiences rather than owned goods, making integrated service design critical.
-
•
New product-focused organizational silos have replaced older ones, yet service design helps reconnect these for better customer experience.
-
•
Organizational silos exist for efficiency and specialization, so service design must work dynamically with this reality rather than eliminate silos entirely.
-
•
The second edition added a chapter on using service design as an organizational change methodology.
-
•
Metrics in service design have matured, with stronger correlations to performance and customer retention, especially in public sector projects.
-
•
Case studies in the new edition come from diverse sectors and regions, showing wider adoption and social proof of effectiveness.
-
•
Artifacts like customer journey maps have become democratized but risk becoming tick-box exercises without true organizational engagement.
-
•
Adapting service design requires understanding different organizational logics (engineering, clinical, commercial) and cultural contexts (e.g., US vs Europe).
-
•
Effective onboarding is a high-value area for service design to bridge silos between sales and customer maintenance teams.
Notable Quotes
"Service design was originally formulated as the alternative to product thinking, but digital products are actually mostly service experiences."
"Organizations say they want to break down silos but often create new ones in product teams; service design helps reconnect them."
"Silos exist for good reasons like efficiency and specialization; service design works within that dynamic rather than erasing silos."
"The new chapter in the second edition looks at service design as a change methodology for organizations, recognizing how ambitious it can be."
"The proof of service design’s effectiveness is now out there in the growing diversity of case studies and practitioner voices."
"Customer journeys used to be specialist knowledge, but now they’re a normalized, even commodified, organizational artifact."
"Many new adopters use service design artifacts as a tick-box exercise rather than embracing the mindset change required."
"You have to socialize service design within organizations considering their dominant logic — whether engineering, clinical, or commercial."
"Europe has leaned more into public sector service design work, which impacts the kinds of metrics and approaches seen in the book."
"Onboarding a new customer well bridges silos between acquisition and maintenance and produces enormous monetary rewards."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We built scaffolding that teams could climb, not cages they had to sit in."
Bianca JeffersonFrom Sprints to Systems: Operationalizing Continuous Discovery Through DesignOps
September 10, 2025
"What extent do our organizations become who they are because of the stories we tell them about who they could be?"
Brigette MetzlerScaling ResearchOps: Helping Researchers do Their Best Work
March 30, 2020
"From setup to analysis, AI moderation still requires a good understanding of what quality research looks like and how to interpret qualitative data."
Tara TresselInvestigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews
March 10, 2026
"If you said are you creative, I’m gonna say hell yeah."
Dr. Karl JeffriesThe Science of Creativity for DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"Enterprises are basically people pursuing outcomes, doing activities, and using objects—this simple theory underpins the language of Edgy."
Milan GuentherA Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
June 6, 2023
"We want to reduce resources required to deliver the experience and create a better experience that also serves diverse needs and challenges."
Chris HammondEmbedding sustainability into enterprise design and development: A journey towards "sustainability consciousness"
April 2, 2025
"Forget about the tools 100% at the beginning of the conversation and perhaps all the way to the end."
Sofia QuinteroBeyond Tools: The Messy Business of Implementing Research Repositories
March 10, 2022
"People from different cultures have different ways of experiencing and showing trauma; body language is not universal."
Uday Gajendar Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSWLeading through the long tail of trauma
July 7, 2022
"Downloading and playing with local open source models gives a different experience than using faceless APIs mediated through interfaces."
Ian JohnsonLatent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data
June 11, 2025
