A Service Design Principle that helps us think beyond the humans we directly serve when making decisions about the services we create and their impact.

Many service creators create fictional characters to help them summarise what they have learned about the people they serve (1). It could be a sheet of paper about "Bob, the supporter, who isn't technically strong with digital stuff but is always keen to help others".

When based on research, these fictional characters can be a pretty strong tool to help us make decisions by asking ourselves: "Would this work for Bob?"

But what if we created similar characters not just for the humans we serve directly but also for animals, parts of nature or the invisible humans impacted by our services (2)?

Action question

What would be an interesting part of nature or your environment that you could use to create a fictional character? Could it be, for example "Billy the air quality?"(3)

Footnotes

(1) That's what the Service Design nerds and innovation people call a "Persona". Such summaries have, for example, information about the fears, needs, and motivations of the character.

(2) That's what some people call Non-human or non-user personas.

(3) Check the "The Non-human Persona Library" for examples of such fictional characters

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.