Service Experience Design Thinking

Service design incorporates a lot of disciplines, including consumer research, interaction design,

product design, industrial design, marketing, and even corporate strategy. It sounds a lot like

UX design, but it’s not quite the same thing: UX may be built on the concepts of experience and

context, but it’s primarily about creating products and apps. Service design, on the other hand,

takes more of a macro view of user/patron experience. Librarians aren’t new to the service

game, but libraries do tend to foster silos and departments that operate in isolation from each

other. Circulation, reference, technical services: each tends to develop their own policies and

workflows within the department, and gather feedback and assess their services once the

policies are in place. Acquisitions policies, in particular, affect all aspects of library services, yet

in can be difficult in larger or segmented libraries for technical services staff to gather the kind

of user feedback that patron-focused departments regularly encounter. Service design,

however, can help us take a broader approach to policy development: if we look at the library

from a holistic perspective, perhaps we can better evaluate and assess the whole library

ecology and deliver better user services in all contexts.

● How can library staff be encouraged to look at library services as a whole, rather than as

independent entities, from a user perspective? How do you cultivate a service design

sentiment within a services-led organization like a library?

○ Is a bottom up management style an appropriate or useful approach?

● Can technical services, functioning as a kind of back-end for the library, lead the way in

breaking up the siloing of departments and functions?

● How does the concept of service design impact acquisitions policy development?

● How do we make it so that all voices are heard, from patrons to staff, without getting

too much noise?

● Is there a good group communication mechanism, like standing meetings or something

else? 

Resources:  Service Experience Conference: http://service­experience­conf.com/  Reinventing the Academic Library and Its Mission: Service Design in Three Merged Finnish Libraries http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S0065­2830%282013%290000036011  Service design for libraries: An introduction http://contentdm.umuc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15434coll5/id/1280  Service Design Toolkit http://www.servicedesigntoolkit.org/  Marquez, J. & Downey, A. (2015). Service design: An introduction to a holistic assessment methodology of library services. Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, 1(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/weave.12535642.0001.201  Bis. (2012). This is service design thinking: Basics, tools, cases.   Liedtka, J., & Ogilvie, T. (2011). Designing for growth: A design thinking tool kit for managers. Columbia University Press.  Løvlie, L., Polaine, A., & Reason, B. (2013). Service Design: From Insight to Implementation. New York: Rosenfield Media, LLC.