It’s okay to use a little lie to make partners respect your work

Daniele Catalanotto
Jan 20, 2023
A Service Design principle for fewer damages

I receive a package at home. On the package, it says: "Careful glass!" with an image of a wine glass next to the text. "Hmmm... I don't remember buying any glasses! Weird."
I open the package, and inside I discover a photo album book I ordered via Journi Blog, the app we use to create albums of our family holidays.


The team behind Journi is using a little lie to help the delivery guy understand that this package has to be handled with care as it's fragile. And this type of stuff really works. The Dutch bike brand Van Moof did something similar (1) by putting an icon of a TV on their boxes. What happened? The company saw an 80% drop in damages on their deliveries.

Not bad for a simple icon change.

Action question

How can you use the codes or rules your partners use and respect to get more care from them? 

Footnote

(1) Thanks to Guy Martin and Pascal Wicht, who shared the image of the Van Moof packages with me.