Put a damn label

Daniele Catalanotto
May 25, 2022
A Service Design principle to reduce frustration.

Context

A good friend shared this Linkedin post that served as a good reminder of the fight I have everytime I change my bed sheets:


Watch my early thoughts in video



Side notes

This is the first draft of this Service Design Principle. Once adapted and refined multiple time, this principle will be part of the book "Service Design Principles 201-300"

Let me know if you find useful or not to have the automatic transcription of the video (as seen below). I'm still playing with this format to create a very first draft of my Service Design principles. 

Automatic transcription

Hi there in this video, I want to share a little service experience and why it's interesting for us as services.

So my wife has a magical power and it's a very cool power. You know, when you put the, the bedsheets on, you know the thing that has to cover the mattress usually when I do it, I try to pet it and then it doesn't work and I have to turn it and then finally find the book kind of like on how you put that, because it's kind of our big tangle, you know, the beds, but the sheets, it doesn't feel like a rectangle.

So you never know what side you have to put first. And so I struggled, struggled, struggled. And when my wife comes, she has this magical power.

She comes basically first laughs and says, okay, you're kind of funny. Why do you always struggle with that? But then she just takes the sheet and says, I think it goes like that.
Then she pats it and it works perfectly or frustrating. Huh. But there is a solution to that. Hence the solution is something that I found that has been shared by, by a good friend who's called Mathias.

And he shared that. So let me share that with you too. So I'm here in notion. It's where I have my kind of database of all my service service experiences that I find interesting and where I collect all the possible services and principles that I run rant want to write about.
So my mate, Mathias shared LinkedIn post from someone else, which was called Fernando  and there is this picture, which is quite interesting.

Let me share that for you. So it's kind of like the bedsheet, but here in this spreadsheet, there is, there are two labels, one where it's written short side and the other one where it's written side super easy.

I think that's how my wife got the magical power. I assume she got, she looked under the sheets, but no, in reality, we don't have sheets like that at home, but this is a very, very simple thing to do to improve the experience of putting a bed sheet on.

But it's something that we can kind of generalize where a lot of the time we forget to put simple labels on things to say, what is, what, and where is long side, the short side.
And I think this is something that is quite inspiring because here we have a very kind of house chore example of it.

But obviously it's also something that goes for digital where, you know, informs to not forget, to put them label in all the form elements so that we know what is what, but also in other elements like edgy, you know, saying what is the long side and what is the short side, you know, Very simple today, but a good reminder.

I think so sometimes these series on principles are just, you know, get sense or, you know, kind of common sense if we can say it like that.

But we often forget about it. So we sometimes need just that little reminder. And this is your daily reminder.

1 comment

Daniele Catalanotto
Jun 27, 2023

Second draft

This is the second draft of this principle and the first written draft based on the automatic transcript of the video above.


My wife has magical power. When I put the bedsheets on the bed to cover the mattress, I never manage to do it on the first try. I always end up putting the long side of the bed sheet on the short side and then can’t manage to cover the whole bed.

So I struggle, struggle and struggle. And that’s the moment when my wife comes with her magical power. She takes the bed sheet and puts it perfectly on the bed and leaves laughing.

But there is hope for all who don’t have that magical power:

Screenshot of a linkedin post by Fernando M. showing a bed sheet with two labels

There are bedsheets that have tiny labels inside saying: “short side”, and “long side” to help those like me.

This is something that we can generalise! Indeed often we forget to put simple labels on things to say, what is and how it works, like for form elements.

Action Question

Where in your service or product could you add labels to make it easier to use by users or employees?

Footnote

Thanks to Fernando M. who shared the image on Linkedin that inspired this tiny story.