Context

Over the years I've built a library of over 400+ answers to common Service Design and Innovation questions. It's now become a tool that makes preparing course much more easy.

A library to pick material from

For a lot of the classes I give at the Master Service Design of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts I use a course structure like this. Students start the day by reading and exploring some material divided in three groups. Then we have three loops with:

• Teaching by the students inspired by the material and their own experiences

• Practice moment where students try out the ideas

• Reflection moment where students share what they learned through the practice and share additional tips from their own experience.

As I now have a lot of content written in my Q&A library, it's pretty easy to find material to give to students to explore. I often do a mix of my material and material of others who might be a bit more academical. But this approach helps me as I don't have to write it all, because most of it I already wrote.

A library to write slowly key ideas

I don't always have the time to write for long hours, but these days I have often 10 short minutes at disposal when I go back from the school of my son to home. During these 10 minutes I record an audio note about something I'd love to teach in my next course. For example at the moment I'm preparing a private course about Design Sprints for Large Organizations. So each time I'm asking myself:

What's something I learned from my practice, and what's the question behind it.

Then I take the time of that short walk to record an audio note to answer that question. Later I bring that audio note in AudioPen, an AI tool that transcribes the audio note and cleans the writing. And finally I review the text, adapt it and publish it on the Q&A library.

This allows me to prepare without much big effort at once, a full course about Design Sprints, and reflect about many tiny important details that make a big difference.

It's a nice way to keep a lot open

The beautiful thing about this is that even when I prepare private or corporate courses that aren't open to the public, I still have the Q&A I've written that are made public to everyone.