A Service Design principle to make your service smarter during emergencies
Context
In the village of Châteaux d’œx, Switzerland, next to the electric lines the danger sign reminds you which are the key emergency service phone numbers. This is something that I also noticed in a different context: a playground in Morges, Switzerland.
See my early thinking 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 of the video
Hi there in this video, I want to share with you some service experiences they went through and how they shaped my thinking about the possible new service design principle.
So let's explore that together. I'm here in my notion at pace where I collect all the service experiences that I find inspiring. And often as it's the case here, it just starts with a photo. And I just add a photo of something that I observed and that I found interesting.
So here I was walking around the village of Chateau de here in Switzerland. It's kind of these very touristic places here in cisterns.
Yep. Beautiful mountains, beautiful forest. And I had a lovely walk and I come across one of these big electric. You can say that you don't want one of these thing that, that carries the electric lines.
And just below that there was a sign that said a pillar, there is a electricity above you. So, you know, kind of can be kind of scary.
Don't touch the lines will, you'll be dead and right next to that, and that's quite smart and they put the key numbers like ambulance.
Okay. You need a doctor because you just touched the line. Hey, that's the number you have to dial. There is not a problem call the police, or if there is something that you say, Hey, this doesn't sound right, or this doesn't look right.
Or it seemed like unstable. Maybe you should call the owners of these electric lines. And so that's something that I find quite interesting.
And if you they later I was in a playground with my son and they're right on the playground. In the middle of the county playground, you had this kind of like message that said, in case of emergency call this number.
You can just fall from there. You're in panic. You don't know what, what you should do. You don't know the number to call because obviously that's exactly the moment where you forget what was the number of the emergency service it's right there.
And it's very visible. So that's quite smart, you know, they giving you the numbered key number, right. Where it matters.
And so I think that's something that is quite relevant, especially for public services, you know, and, and thinking about what places of our service can be a bit dangerous.
Yeah. What are the places where people can get hurt, where people could fall, where people cool, you know, have an accident.
And in these places, remember reminds people, what are the key emergency numbers?
That's at the tip that works really well for public services, but for nonpublic services, I think there is kind of the same idea, you know?
And for example the here in Switzerland, we have a thing where in big organizations, you don't buy these big printers.
You how you say you rent them. Yeah. You rent them to another company that, that then delivers them to you and, and, and, and services them for you.
And what they do is right on the printer, they packed a little number that says, Hey, having an issue with a printer, that's the number you should call from the service provider.
And that's again, very smart. You know, it's like oh, I'm stuck. The paper got stuck. I don't know how to restart the machine, you know?
And usually you kind of open the lid to see, Hey maybe I, I can fix that myself. And that's exactly the point, the place where they put the number, kind of saying, Hey, maybe don't repeat that to yourself, just call us.
And that's, again, something that is quite smart. So I think for any service provider, we can really think about what are the key moments, the key places where we know that's the place where we should pass the key number for a helpline, for an emergency or for something else, because people will lose the manual and they will say, ah, f**k, I need to fix the printer.
But what, when was that number again? It's right where it should be. It's under printer on the place where it usually gets broken.
That's basically it for today, I think. Yeah. I'm very simple principle putting them number where people have the problem. That's it.