This is Service Design Thinking Basics, Tools, Cases

serv·ice de·sign      The activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service, in order to improve its quality, the interaction between service provider and customers and the customer's experience.      So what is service design thinking? If you have two coffee shops right next to each other, and each sell the exact same coffee at the exact same price, service design is what makes you walk into one and not the other.  Maybe one plays music and the other doesn't.  Maybe one takes credit cards and the other is cash only.  Maybe you like the layout of one over the other, or one has more comfortable seating.  Maybe the staff at one is friendlier, or draws fun shapes on the top of their lattes.  All of these nuances relate to service design.      This Is Service Design Thinking is divided into three sections: Basics: outlines service design thinking along five basic principles. Tools: describing a variety of tools and methods used in Service Design Thinking. Cases: vivid examples for the introduced fundamentals with real-life case studies from 5 companies that did inspiring projects within the field of Service Design.      At the end, a one-page "Customer Journey Canvas" is included, which can be used to quickly sketch any service on a single sheet of paper--capturing different stakeholder concerns: e.g. customers, front-line staff and management.      Design thinking and service design are current hot topics in management and business consulting.  This is Service Design Thinking is the first book introducing this new visual way of thinking about design.  Until now, there was no comprehensive book outlining service design thinking, including its background, process, methods and tools as well as contemporary case studies.  A set of 23 international authors created this interdisciplinary textbook applying exactly the same user-centered and co-creative approach it preaches.

Marc Stickdorn (Austria; http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com; www.destinable.com) is co-founder of Destinable, a consultancy specializing in service design for tourism, and lectures around the world at business and design schools.  He is a professor at the Management Center Innsbruck in Austria, where he lectures on service design and service innovation.  His main areas of interest are service design and strategic marketing management particularly in a tourism context.

Jakob Schneider (Germany) is a graphic designer based in Germany.