A Service Design Principle on how to change a terrible experience into a lovely one. This principle is inspired by a community contribution from Swareena Joshi
You are a kid. The optician tells the bad news to your parents: you’ll need to wear an eye patch for two hours per day for three months to help your vision.
As a kid, this is bad, bad news! You look like a pirate with an eye patch, but not in a good way. Your friends make fun of you. It feels weird to have that thing on your face! And it’s for three months! That’s a lot of days!
What if, as a kid, you would say after three months of wearing that damn eye patch: “I want to wear it longer!”. You would tell me this isn’t possible. But it is!
That’s what Swareena Joshi (1) observed with a friend whose child wears an eye patch.
Each day the kid receives a new eye patch. But that’s not just a standard boring eye patch. No, this one has character (2), and it changes everything.
One day it’s his favourite Disney character who’s on it. The next day it’s one from a Pixar movie! So every day, the kid is excited! He might say: “Mom, what character patch do I get today?!”
The good stuff doesn’t stop there. At the end of each day, the kid can take out the eye patch and stick it on a little calendar poster (3). In this way, the child can see that he is making progress! The poster with the eye patches sticked on it.
This little story proves that it’s definitely possible to turn a terrible experience, like wearing an eye patch as a kid, into something you get excited about!
So this might be possible for many other horrible experiences.
As service creators, we can ask ourselves:
What can we do to make people want more of the experiences that suck for now?
For example, if meetings are a part of your work experience that mostly sucks, which is the case in many places, you can ask yourself: How can I create meetings where everybody says at the end: “Oh no! It’s already finished! Can we schedule another one?!”
You can make people want more healthy experiences even if they suck at first.
Footnotes
(1) Thanks to Swareena, who shared the original story and picture of the eye patch calendar that inspired this Service Design principle.
(2) These eyepatches are designed by a company called Ortopad. The company also creates educational and motivational material both for kids and parents.
(3) The calendar is provided by Trusetal who seems to be a reseller of Ortopad material.
Alternative titles
I'm not yet convinced of the title of this principle, so I'm "thinking out loud" by writing in order to find better alternatives:
Make me want more of it: the title I'm starting with
Ask yourself how you can make me love this terrible experience: very descriptive, too long but gives the right idea.
Make me ask more of this shitty experience: better as it shows from the start that this principle is about bad experiences
Make me want more of this shitty experience: maybe the verb "want" is better?
What title do you prefer? Do you have other ideas?
Little side notes
This principle is based on a story shared by Swareena Joshi from which we extracted together several different principles. Thanks Swareena for sharing such an inspiring story!
This is the first draft of this Service Design Principle.
As always feel free to share comments, feedback or personal stories to improve this principle.
4 comments
Deirdre Malone
Oct 13, 2022
A suggestion Convince me that I’ll love this seemingly awful experience after all!
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 15, 2022
Oooooh lovely title. Thanks Deirdre ❤️
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 18, 2022
The second draft of this Service Design Principle
You are a kid. The optician tells the bad news to your parents. You’ll need to wear an eye patch for two hours per day for three months to help your vision.
That’s bad, bad news! You look like a pirate with an eye patch, but not in a good way. Your friends make fun of you. It feels weird to have that thing on your face! And it’s for three months!
What if, as a kid, you would say after three months of wearing that damn eye patch: “I want to wear it longer!”. You would tell me this is impossible. But it is!
That’s the story of the kid of Swareena Joshi’s friend (1).
Each day the kid receives a new eye patch. But that’s not just a standard boring eye patch (2). One day it’s his favourite Disney character who’s on it. The next day it’s one from a Pixar movie! So every day, the kid might say: “Mom, what character patch do I get today?!”
So it’s possible to turn a terrible but healthy experience into something you want more of!
As service creators, we can ask ourselves:
What can we do to make people want more of the experiences that suck for now?
For example, if your work meetings suck, ask yourself this. “How can I create meetings where everybody says at the end: “Oh no! It’s already finished! Can we schedule another one?!””.
Footnotes
(1) Thanks to Swareena, who shared the original story and picture of the eye patch calendar that inspired this Service Design principle.
(2) These eyepatches are designed by a company called Ortopad. The company also creates educational and motivational material both for kids and parents.
(3) The calendar is provided by Trusetal
Daniele’s notes
This is the second draft of this principle
I’ve reduced by 30% the length of this principle compared to its first version.
I’ve deleted the part about the poster as I mention it in another principle, so it doesn’t need to be detailed twice in the book.
Title, based on Deirdre's suggestion, we could name this principle: "Make me love this awful experience"
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 31, 2022
The third draft of this Service Design Principle
You are a kid. The optician tells the bad news to your parents. You’ll need to wear an eye patch for two hours per day for three months to help fix your eyes.
That’s terrible news! You’ll look like a pirate with an eye patch, but not in a good way. Your friends will make fun of you. And it’s for three months!
What if, as a kid, you would say after three months of wearing that damn eye patch: “I want to wear it longer!”. Sounds impossible. But it is possible!
That’s what Swareena Joshi saw with her friend’s kid (1).
Every day the kid receives a new eye patch with a new cartoon character on it (2). One day it’s a Disney character. The next day one from a Pixar movie! So every day, the kid might say: “Mom, what patch do I get today on my patch?!”
So we can turn a terrible but healthy experience into something you want more of!
So let me ask.
What can we do to make people want more of the experiences that suck for now? (4)
Footnotes
(1) A big thank you to Swareena Joshi for sharing the service experience that inspired this principle with the co-creator community.
(2) These eyepatches are designed by a company called Ortopad. The company also creates educational and motivational material both for kids and parents.
(3) The calendar is provided by Trusetal
(4) For example, if your work meetings suck, ask yourself this. “How can I create meetings where everybody says at the end: “Oh no! It’s already finished! Can we schedule another one?!””
Daniele’s notes
This is the third draft of this principle.
I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 22 % compared to the previous draft.
