BIS Publishers Good Services: How to Design Services That Work

O livro veio danificado na parte de trás e com mancha de humidade

Short sharp n punchy. Written by experience not academia’s view of life.

I’m not going to let the design detract from my review of the content, which is fantastic. There’s a lot of very clear information in this little book. That said, the design is insane. And by design, I mostly mean the typesetting. Everything is bold Helvetica, with no space between paragraphs, and very little to break up long passages of text that often span two full facing pages. Luckily, the text is well written, taking good advantage of plain language principles. The text is incredibly poorly formatted, but it’s easier to read than I would have guessed. Some of the text colors may be problematic for people with low vision, but I actually liked them. I thought they were a bold choice (no pun intended). I saw a mention of typos in another review, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s not obvious that this is written in British English. I’m occasionally surprised by British spellings of some less common words, but nothing jumped out as a typo. It was a little odd reading Mike Monteiro’s forward with British spellings on his words, but there’s really no reason they shouldn’t be formatted like the rest of the book. If you’re really put off by the reviews of the design, get the ebook. It’s a bargain of a book, with a lot more packed in than you might get from a Rosenfeld book for more than twice the price. Even with the design, I’m glad to have gotten it in print, so I can have it as a reference I can flip through.

Un libro basado en los principios del service design, una disciplina no tan popular pero en constante crecimiento, de lectura bastante amigable, bueno para tanto expertos como para novatos en el tema. Es mi libro favorito para recomendar a nuevos diseñadores.

As someone who is constantly on the lookout for service design books, I must say that this is one of the best, if not the best book that has come my way. There are really good books on using the tools, methodologies and case studies, but this does a really good job defining what a good service is and I honestly cannot find anything to fault it. Visually is really appealing, the fiery orange cover, which is really nice and the layout of the book and how each page has been designed. This book is very well written, it uses a simple language and is easy to read. It explains what a good service is, and it outlines the principles for services that work. This is a staple book for the service design community and every designer especially those who work in and around public services need to read!