Reading Circle- Bad Services
**See full reading schedule below**
Start date moved due to late September US publication date
60 minute discussions over two months, moderated by John Alberts, Learning Advocate
Cost: FREE for all member types, register to join the Open Circle (FREE) for invites.
Reading Circle- Bad Services
Join our next book club facilitated by Lai Alberts, where we are exploring just published Bad Services: How to Fix Services That Don’t Work by Lou Downe. Downe is the former Director of Design for the UK Government, where they founded service design as a discipline within government and built one of the largest, most influential design teams in the UK.
This book challenges the assumption that a well-designed service, once launched, will stay that way. Downe argues that bad services aren’t usually the result of bad design; they’re the result of organisational failures: silos, lack of ownership, risk aversion, and an absence of buy-in that let good design decay over time. Following on from Good Services and its 15 principles, this book flips the lens: instead of asking what makes a service work, it asks why services keep breaking down even when we know better.
The book offers a practical diagnostic tool (the 5 Causes of Bad Services) for understanding how organisations undermine their own good intentions, and what it actually takes to make services resilient rather than just launch-ready.
As part of this discussion, we’ll reflect on how these ideas apply to our own work. Where in our organisations does ownership quietly disappear once a project ships? What silos are shaping or sabotaging the services we design? And where do we mistake a one-time fix for the ongoing work of keeping a service good?
Why this matters:
This matters because designing good services requires more than good intentions at launch. It requires awareness, accountability, and the ability to see how organisational decisions– made before your project ships– inadvertently erode the services people depend on. These discussions are an opportunity to connect those dots and think more critically about the conditions we create for services to survive, not just succeed once.
Join us for a thoughtful, practical conversation about how we can build and sustain services that actually work, in organisations that don’t always make that easy.
Feel free to join as many Reading Circles as possible (you don’t have to attend all of them to participate).
Reading schedule
| Date | Chapters | |
| 13th October
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
The 5 causes of bad services
|
p 6-36
|
| 27th October
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
What are services? |
p 36-48 |
| 10th November
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
Cause 1 Purpose |
p 48-74 |
| 24th November
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
Cause 1 Users |
p 74-110 |
| 8th December
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
Cause 3 Materials |
p 110-146 |
| 22nd December
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
Cause 4 Risk
|
p 146-184 |
| 5th January
11:00 EST/16:00 GMT (UK) |
Cause 5 Structure |
p 184-250 |
Why join the UXIC Reading Circle book club?
- Stay accountable with a like-minded group with a doable regular reading schedule.
- Expand your perspectives with small group discussions comparing new ideas and understandings.
- Build personal and professional development skills while being intellectually engaged.
Currently FREE and a small group, learn, discuss, share, and, on occasion, get a chance to ask the author directly…
How it works: You buy the book, read set chapters, and meet every two weeks to discuss (moderated by John Alberts, Learning Advocate).