Keep looking for weird things that happen in your service

Daniele Catalanotto
Sep 28, 2022


A Service Design Principle to keep improving your service over the years.

You are living with your partner, and it’s years since you don’t ask her how she feels. What happens? She dumps you! You are an insensitive moron!

We do that with many of our services and the users involved. For example, before a service goes live, we test our ideas and ask people their opinions. But often, once a service is launched, we go into routine mode and forget to be as curious as we were at the beginning.

Sure it makes sense to test your idea before building it, and that’s something we should do. But it might not be enough. People change, and the way people use your service changes too. Also there is so much we can’t know before people use a service in real life for a long time.

As with any relationship, your relationship with your service and the people involved benefit from continuous curiosity.

So let me ask you this.

What’s one thing you can do this week to be curious about a part of your service or product that is in routine mode? What could you do to discover what could be improved or changed?

Footnotes


Daniele's personal notes

  • This is the first draft of this Service Design Principle.
  • Once adapted, even more, this principle could be part of the book "Service Design Principles 201-300"
  • As always feel free to share comments, feedback or personal stories to improve this principle.
Like 2
Deirdre Malone
Oct 13, 2022
Continuous Curiosity! Love it! This can even apply to a short interaction in a restaurant or cafe where often the initial enthusiasm in the customer dwindles, especially today when the service provider has a curiosity that competes with the customer - the phone in their pocket! 
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 15, 2022
Thanks for adding the additional context 🙏
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 20, 2022

The second draft of this Service Design Principle

You live with your partner, and it’s years that you don’t ask her how she feels. What happens? She dumps you! You are an insensitive moron!

That’s often what we do with our services. Once it’s launched, we go into routine mode and forget to be as curious as we were at the beginning (1).

Your relationship with your service and users is like any relationship. It benefits from continuous curiosity because people change, and you can’t predict everything. People and the way people use your service change. And there is so much we can’t know before people use a service in real life for a long time.

So let me ask you this.

What’s one thing you can do this week to be curious about a part of your service or product that is in routine mode? How can you discover what you need to improve or change?

Footnotes

(1) For example, before a service goes live, we test our ideas and ask people their opinions to improve it before launch.

A big thank you to Genevieve Abbey for sharing feedback that inspired this principle with the co-creator community.

Daniele’s notes

  • This is the second draft of this principle.
  • I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 24% compared to its first draft.
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 31, 2022

The third draft of this Service Design Principle

You live with your partner, and it’s years that you don’t ask her how she feels. What happens? She dumps you! You are an insensitive moron!

We often do that with our services. When launched, we go into routine mode and forget to be as curious as we were at the beginning (1).

Your relationship with your service and users is like any relationship. It benefits from continuous curiosity. Because people change, how they use your service changes, and you can’t predict everything before a launch.

So let me ask you.

What’s one thing you can do this week to be curious about something which is in routine mode? How can you discover what you need to improve or change?

Footnotes

(1) For example, before a service goes live, we test our ideas and ask people their opinions to improve it before launch.

A big thank you to Genevieve Abbey for sharing feedback that inspired this principle with the co-creator community.

Daniele’s notes

  • This is the third draft of this principle.
  • I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 19 % compared to the previous draft.