This Is No History Book
Hi there, happy to have you as a reader. I have a rule in life and for work that says: frustrate people as early as possible. This is what these first words will be about.
This tiny little booklet, that you should be able to read in less than two hours, is not a history book. The title tries to be clear about it. This is just a tiny and personal view of the history of Service Design. I’m very passionate about Service Design. The more my passion grows, the more I notice that I have the passion of the practitioner but don’t know much about the theory and history. I wasn’t able to even tell people when Service Design was invented. So, I started looking for a book on the topic but wasn’t able to find one. To fix my frustration, I decided to create a tiny book.
In a way, this booklet is here for me to look less stupid when, in the next party, someone asks me: “When was Service Design invented?” Then, I will be able to answer: “We can link it to Plato’s Republic”. I can now brag in a party. This is already a good enough reason for this tiny booklet to exist.
I say it clearly: I’m not a historian. I didn’t read three hundred books about the history of innovation. I didn’t ask four random historians of art and design to check what I’m saying here. I just browsed the web on a weekend that felt very long and built a timeline based on what some people who are smarter than me had to say. Of course, many of these dates come back repeatedly in different articles and sources. Still, don’t consider this as a well-researched history.
The scope for me here is to create a rough timeline of Service Design so that I am little less stupid about my own practice. With time, I have learned that the best way for me to remember something is to teach it. That’s why I’m writing this book—more to remember the dates of this timeline than to educate the design world.
