I'm practising
You know the basics and now have a service in front of you. These are the methods, service manuals, examples and tools that practitioners lean on, along with communities where you can ask the awkward questions.
Start with these
A method for mapping a service end to end, showing what the user experiences alongside the frontstage and backstage work that makes it happen. Explained clearly by Nielsen Norman Group.
Mapping what a person does, thinks and feels as they try to get something done across a service. Nielsen Norman Group's introduction covers the anatomy and the pitfalls.
The UK government's manual for designing and running public services: the Service Standard, guidance on discovery, alpha, beta and live, and on user research and service design.
The free online companion to the book: over fifty methods for research, ideation, prototyping and facilitation, each with a step-by-step description.
An open collection of communication tools and methods for designing services, started by Roberta Tassi and maintained as a shared library.
The community for service, interaction and content designers working in and around the UK government, coordinated through the GOV.UK Service Manual.
Questions you might have
Then keep going
Fifteen principles of good service design, drawn from Lou Downe's time leading design across the UK government. Short, plain and opinionated.
International organisation supporting the development of service design practice, with local chapters, an academy, a journal and an annual conference.
The practical companion to service design, covering research, ideation, prototyping and implementation with a large method library. Widely used as a course text.
Government Social Research guidance on making research more inclusive: recruitment, adapted methods and attention to under-represented groups.
Step-by-step guidance for eleven systems thinking tools, including systems mapping, feedback loops and leverage points.
Co-author of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation, host of the Power of Ten podcast, and a writer on design at many scales.
A 2021 paper proposing a power literacy framework for service designers, covering privilege, access, goals, roles and rules. Open access copy from TU Delft.
A focused journey mapping tool with a free tier, popular with people who want something simpler than a whiteboard and lighter than a platform.
The UK government's blog about design, written by the people doing it across departments. Honest accounts of what worked and what did not.
A community-authored set of principles that put the people affected by design at the centre, foregrounding lived experience and community-controlled outcomes.
The Ministry of Justice design system's introduction to ethical considerations for service teams, including harm, vulnerability, discrimination, trust and automated decisions.
The Ministry of Justice's principles for ethical services, including minimising harm, balancing power, inclusion, honesty and responsibility.
Figma's collaborative whiteboard, often used by teams who already prototype in Figma for workshops and mapping.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on informed, voluntary participation: participant information, consent records and the right to withdraw.
Ten principles for designing government services, starting with 'start with user needs'. Short enough to read in five minutes and widely borrowed outside government.
Department for Education user research guidance on gathering, confirming and recording consent, including checking that people still agree as a session goes on.
Nielsen Norman Group on what interviews can and cannot reveal, including fallible memory and rationalised accounts of past behaviour, and why they pair with observation.
Author of The Service Organization, writing about how large organisations need to change to deliver good services.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on learning about user needs through existing evidence, interviews, observation and the people who support users.
One of the first dedicated service design consultancies, founded in London in 2001, with studios in Europe and South America and a long record of published thinking.
Author of Good Services and co-founder of the School of Good Services. Formerly Director of Design for the UK government.
A thorough guide to the whole family of alignment diagrams: journey maps, service blueprints, experience maps and mental model diagrams.
Co-author of This is Service Design Thinking and This is Service Design Doing, and co-founder of the software company behind Smaply.
Online whiteboard used widely for journey maps, blueprints and remote workshops, with a large library of service design templates.
Design principles, components and guidance for building health services in England, with a strong focus on accessibility and content.
On designing experiences that unfold across channels and over time, with a strong emphasis on mapping and on the language of experience design.
A team in the UK Cabinet Office that brings design, data and ethnography into policy making, and writes openly about how.
A ServDes 2025 paper introducing a project-centred template for examining how social, political and ecological forces enable or constrain design work. A proposed tool whose evaluation is ongoing.
A chapter in Doing Good Qualitative Research examining how power in the researcher and participant relationship shapes what is learned, and proposing a power-conscious approach.
Andy Polaine's podcast about design operating at many levels, from details to systems, with guests across service, strategic and systemic design.
Department for Education guidance on the ethics of researching colleagues: pressure to take part, voluntary participation, authority and confidentiality.
Department for Education guidance on research across languages: working with interpreters, cultural sensitivities and accessible consent materials.
UKRI and ESRC research ethics guidance on contextual vulnerability and actively given, informed consent, including the problem of passive or gatekeeper assent.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on reconstructing a service experience by exploring what people did, thought and felt over time.
Short courses on designing and leading services, run by Lou Downe and Sarah Drummond and grounded in public-sector experience.
The Service Design Network's training arm, offering online and in-person courses from introductory to advanced, taught by accredited trainers.
Occasional evening meetups in Manchester run by the Service Design Network UK chapter, usually hosted by a local studio or public sector team.
A free early-morning meetup in Brighton for people from Sussex and the South East, hosted by Clearleft every two months. Networking over breakfast, sometimes with a guest speaker.
Informal evening meetup for the Amsterdam service design community, hosted by a rotating set of studios.
Long-running informal monthly meetup for service designers in Berlin, with short talks followed by conversation.
A guide to using service design inside organisations, aimed at people who need to make the case for it as much as do it.
A volunteer-run festival of talks, workshops and open studios in London, running alongside the London Design Festival each September.
The Service Design Network's annual conference, moving between host cities each year, with talks, workshops and the Service Design Award. The 2026 edition is in Wiesbaden, Germany, with an online option.
An annual conference in Edinburgh for people designing public services, with workshops and talks drawn from across the UK and international public sectors.
The UK chapter of the Service Design Network, running talks, socials and an annual chapter conference for practitioners across the country.
Marc Fonteijn's long-running video series and podcast of conversations with service design practitioners, aimed squarely at people doing the work.
A clear account of what service design is and how it is done, from research through to measuring the results, by three practitioners from Livework.
London's long-running service design meetup, going since 2015, with roughly monthly talks for experienced practitioners, newcomers and the curious alike. Also a podcast and a YouTube channel of recorded talks.
Recordings of talks from the Service Lab London meetup on YouTube, going back several years. A good way to hear practitioners describe real work.
Software for building and maintaining journey maps, personas and stakeholder maps, made by the team behind This is Service Design Doing.
Identifying the people and organisations involved in a service and drawing out how they relate to it and to each other. Explained in the Service Design Tools library.
International association for people working at the meeting point of systems thinking and design. Runs the annual Relating Systems Thinking and Design symposium.
The Design Council's evolution of the Double Diamond for problems that span organisations and systems, with a set of design principles and roles.
The Government Office for Science's introduction to systems thinking for complex public sector problems, bringing together guidance, tools and case studies.
An applied guide connecting systems thinking principles to defining goals, understanding a system, designing collaboratively and evaluating change.
The Scottish Government's framework and community for designing public services with the people who use them, with a shared method bank.
An occasional printed newspaper about service design, started by Martin Jordan in 2015, with short pieces from practitioners around the world. Most articles are also published online.
How organisations need to change, in their structures and leadership, to deliver services that work. Written from experience inside large public and private organisations.
A ServDes 2018 paper and case study exploring stakeholder mapping as a way to talk about roles and the distribution of power in public service design.
Journey management software for organisations that want to keep many journey maps consistent and connected to opportunities and delivery work.
Gerry Scullion's podcast network on human-centred design, with a dedicated strand of conversations about service design and public services.
The Service Design Network's journal, published since 2009. Each issue takes a theme and mixes practitioner and academic writing.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on planning and running interviews to understand people's circumstances, experiences, problems and needs.
A journal article examining the contextual and organisational factors that limit service designers' ability to address power dynamics in their work.