The full transcript of my conversation with Megs
This transcript was generated using Descript. So it might contain some creative mistakes.
Daniele Catalanotto: Megs, I'm super excited to have you here today to have a little conversation about the book Service Design Principles 301 to 400.
Megs Armour: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Daniel. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very thrilled you asked me. I look forward to sharing some
Daniele Catalanotto: thoughts on it. Thank you.
About Megs
Daniele Catalanotto: My first question to you: How do you present yourself in a birthday
Megs Armour: party? That's a very good question. In my personal life, because I've moved countries seven times, I tend to introduce myself as a bit of a world traveler who maybe has Grasses Greener Syndrome. And I like to always find a mutual friend with someone in a random country.
And in my professional life, it's very hard to explain to people what a director of customer strategy and service design actually means. And even within my own company, it's very confusing to explain what that means to other consultants at EY. So I tend to say I help clients actually understand what services they put out into the world and actually help them see what they're delivering from their end customer's point of view.
Because more often than not, people don't actually know what they're putting out into the world in terms of end to end services. It's my job to go in and help them make a clear strategy. What are you trying to do? Who are you trying to attract? What is the experience you're trying to deliver? And set up the right internal conditions for them to do that and understand what it means for their customers.
So if, and if people are still listening at that point, I'll probably reel off some more stuff. But that's probably the point they need a beer.
Daniele Catalanotto: Thanks so much. And may I ask, so for what type of services are you doing that work or for what type of companies? What part of the ecosystem are you working
Megs Armour: on most? Yeah. So Since being in Canada, actually, I predominantly work in the public sector and the gaming sector. So those are my two sort of focus areas. And I'm typically working with like head of digital, head of customer experience and helping them basically drive shared outcomes across all their other functions in terms of, hey guys, let's actually work together and create an amazing customer experience that we're all delivering.
In silos, and there'd be so much power if we all worked together and had the same methods and mindsets. So that's where I play here. But I've, so I've been doing strategic design consulting for a decade. And in that time in, in London and Australia, I've really worked across like most sectors, financial services and telcos and mining and whatnot.
I wouldn't say I'm pigeonholed in one place.
Varying maturity levels of Service Design
Daniele Catalanotto: And as a word traveler, you might have a. perspective on the maturity of service design and I'm quite interested in that because you've been in many places, you've seen a lot of things, how do you see the world's maturity of service design in different countries?
Is it, do you see it like as a common thing, it's an average, every place is the same or do you see... Different countries have a bit of a different feel.
Megs Armour: Yeah, I'm going to sound biased because I'm Scottish. Okay, but I do think the UK has a very mature service design market or even just like design community.
And in the time I spent there, I felt like even the organizations I worked in, they just had more mature internal conditions and leaders and mindsets and they value design a lot more and design had maybe a bit more of a seat at the table when making investment decisions and I think the UK design community on the whole is very tight knit, is very vocal Maybe that's just because we're British and we like to chat, but I think that from my experiences, I do think that the UK service design community is mature.
Canada and Australia, so I spent four years living in Sydney, and now I've almost spent two years living in Canada. Honestly, maybe it's just the size of the country and everyone is just so bloody spread out that there are brilliant practitioners that are just working hours and hours away from each other that don't have that same sense of community and progression and I think a lot of the designers I've worked with in Australia and Canada, they're a bit of a jack of all trades and they've maybe tried to UX and moved into product and moved into service design a slightly more generalist than some of the brilliant deep specialist service design SMEs I was working with in the UK.
So sorry, totally biased, but that's my two cents.
Daniele Catalanotto: I love it. I love your hypothesis on the size of the country, how it. It changes also the relation to the community, right? I think it's an interesting insight because definitely when I was
Megs Armour: like...
I was going to say, I think because in Canada, I crave a sense of community beyond work, beyond the four walls of EY more. And so I seek it in different international places online. I do a lot of trying to build an online community. That would be amazing to have in Canada, but I do think, yeah, it's just it's so big, it's so vast and diverse that it's you're never going to meet people.
I think when I moved here, I actually thought I'd go to Toronto all the time in my silly... Minds, that would be like something I do from Vancouver. I don't, I've never been. It's a six hour flight. I've never been, so distance has something to do with it for
Daniele Catalanotto: sure.
Online communities for service designers
Daniele Catalanotto: And so you've been exploring online communities.
So do you have maybe a suggestion for someone who says? I feel a bit alone in my service design practice in my country, in my region online might be an opportunity. Do you have a few names of communities that you say, hey, these are really cool communities, they can be interesting, that I feel I felt supported there?
Megs Armour: Totally. Yeah one that I'm exploring at the moment, which I would highly recommend is called Delta CX. And it's done, run by an amazing woman called Debbie Levitt, who's a bit of a... Just like design guru, I'd say. And I'd heard about it via podcasts and different things online. And she's got a broader CX community and UX community, and then a level based one as well.
And it's fantastic. I joined a call at 6am the other day with some lovely folks from Croatia and Italy. And we had a great chat about metrics. So yeah, that's one off the top of my head. I would recommend that you check out. And she has a phenomenal, youTube set up of 800 hours of CX, UX, service design videos, which you should check
Daniele Catalanotto: out too.
Lovely. Indeed. I think Debbie is a great name to know, especially as she is not only focused on, like service design, but more like this, the broader CX topic which is definitely also interesting. Maybe one to mention that just came up while you were talking was.
Marc Fonteijn's Circle. I think that's if you want to be more specific about pure service design and you're working in a big organization, then I think that community can definitely also be quite interesting.
Megs Armour: 100%. I've never been in house, so I sadly have never been able to partake in Marc's Circle, but yeah, his his podcast as well, I would highly recommend.
It's a fantastic resource for all service designers looking to learn.
The good stuff
Daniele Catalanotto: I would suggest we jump now right into the book stuff. So let me ask, is there something in that chapter that you had, which is how to make information less overwhelming? Was there something that resonated with you where you said, Oh that's pretty
Megs Armour: interesting.
The good stuff: information overload
Megs Armour: Yeah. Lots resonated with me. I think, so this is a really important chapter. By the way, and I'll tell you why it's a really important chapter before I, the lots resonated with me, but when you asked me to read it, the entire time I was thinking like, wow, in the modern world, we are just so bombarded with information.
We're actually like catapulted with information. On a daily, hourly basis. Sometimes I feel like my brain is this never ending inbox of like messages from WhatsApp and email and Teams and Instagram, Discord, Slack. It's like this big stream. And as humans, we're we're just experiencing so much competing information all the time on different channels and interfaces and devices.
It's really easy to miss things. It's like very important things in a service. And like how many times have you been. On a work call, whilst writing an email, whilst flicking through an app on your phone to try and get like car insurance or find an Airbnb or something, like our phones and our tablets and our computers.
The way it's helping us see and consume and use more digital services simultaneously each year. So that I think our digital consumption speed is getting faster and faster. And I was reading that scientists have actually measured that our human brain each day absorbs 74 gigabytes, which is the same as watching 16 movies.
So each day your brain is absorbing 16 movies, 500 years ago. Sixteen movies, that's what you'd absorb in a lifetime. And now we're doing it each day, we're consuming that in a day that's crazy. And in the context of your chapter what does that mean? If a service is confusing and overwhelming, and we're getting frustrated...
We're going to drop it. We have selective attention, like digital services mean that you can start them and stop them when you want. And you can just focus on the information you want to, that helps you achieve your goal or your job. So I was thinking about this selective processing information and.
And you got on one hand, you're being thrown the 16 movies in the day. But then on the other hand, Miller's Law of Psychology states that you can actually only retain seven pieces of information in your short term brain. So you've got this long term daily 16 movies, and then in the moment, you only really remember seven things.
So I think when people are designing marketing materials or interfaces, manuals, processes, services, whatever, it's, you've really got to think about this concept of competing information. Your customer is being bombarded. They're doing your service whilst they're doing something else.
They're only remembering seven things, okay? How can we make information less overwhelming so that it is digested and it is retained? And so that was like, this is my burning platform. So that's why I was thinking as I was reading it, like this is important stuff. Given, this is how we live today as humans.
I see you're nodding, like I'm sure you agree. This is, you are being shocked with information every hour of the day in our lives.
Daniele Catalanotto: And it's, I love this. This mention that you have, this, we have changed over a few lifetimes, the amount of information has totally changed and it's completely new.
And and this question of competitive attention is it's one that I, back in the days when I designed websites, I was always saying, Why the fuck should I go on your website and not on YouTube or looking funny GIFs, which is a very good question, just to scrap a lot of information and content where you're competing with a TED talk right now.
Is this worth it? Is this really what you want people to see about your company or can we go to the interesting stuff right away?
Megs Armour: Yeah, it's so interesting. I think people in businesses I always work with, they think of their competitors as their immediate competitors. They're like, oh yeah, this information.
We'll just compare it to our immediate market competitor. And I'm like, guys, no, compare it to every single app on this phone. That's who you're actually competing against. That's, expectations have changed. The bar has changed. You need to broaden your horizons when thinking about.
Yeah, you can pay yourselves too. Anyway, so reading your chapter, I'm thinking about all this stuff. Immediately, your 11 principles really reminded me of my experience of moving to Canada and just to like share quickly on that story, anyone who has immigrated to Canada will appreciate that the IRCC website.
Which stands for Immigration, Refugees, and Canadian Citizenship, I think. It's the most frustrating, complex, overwhelming service on the entire planet. And the Canadian government, they set very high immigration standards every year. Like, when I applied, I think it was 500, 000 people they needed to enter the country.
That is a big public goal. People like me enable that goal. So you'd think with such a public push to attract and retain international workforce, they'd design a great service that wasn't confusing, frustrating, and overwhelming. But as I read these 11 principles, I was like, wow, the people at IRCC really need to read this book.
And reflecting on certain ones, it just really brought it to life. I could never find my answers in. In the FAQs, there were simple questions. I never knew where I was in the process. I could never log in and return to my application. They sent me huge emails every week in French, like French, not even English.
And as I shared more information about myself. It was like I was unlocking these new levels of shitness. It was like surprise admin around the corner. Guess what? 85 more forms. I printed over a hundred documents. My local print shop knew me by my first name. They were invested in my application. It took six months to complete and my partner got his months later, even though we applied together.
So like I'm reading the principles. Thinking about this experience and how they should really read the book. And my big takeaway was this kind of like meta theme of people really need to consider the right information to the right person at the right time. This is my biggest thing I'm thinking about in all of these principles, right information, right person, right time.
That's at the heart of great service design and reading. It made me think like the value. Of information. It depends on its relevance and its usefulness to the person who's reading it. So you're, your principles that are like, give me information about problems I can solve in this moment, share a video of what I need to do next.
Tell me what boring admin I have coming up. These are all things that they're about this meta theme of just give me the right person, the right information at the right time. So I can do, yeah, I can complete the task and I can be happy and it's a good experience. I think as service designers, you've got to recognize that the right information, it could be raw data, it could be a step, it could be a life cycle, it could be an FAQ, and the right person, it could be a parent, or like a bank account holder, or a C suite, a customer, the right time might be at the point of payment, 24 hours after, when a contract starts or ends and I think these principles will help service designers.
Ensure they deliver the right information at the right time to the right person. I'll pause there. I see you nodding.
Daniele Catalanotto: And I think that the opposite question is also extremely relevant. What's not the right information? What's the wrong information? What's the wrong people? What's the wrong moment to share that? Because often, we're like, oh yeah, here we could share this. And is it really the best moment to share that?
Megs Armour: Right. 100%. And I think that people need to think about the ROI. Of the right information, right person, right time, I think clear and relevant and personalized signposts, they empower a customer, they safeguard operational staff, they lower costs. People like me are calling the call center every day saying, hello, I need my application approved, I've already booked my flight, where is it?
And it's because information is overwhelming, you're going to take a break. You're going to say, Oh, I can't. I can't do this. I need a break. It's too hard. I'm going to go back to work and going back to being on my phone. And that's going to add on more time. That's going to make it less profitable or viable for the operators.
So I think like a lot of this chapter, if it was applied correctly, it'd be interesting to look at the ROI. It'd be huge.
The business cost of information overload
Daniele Catalanotto: And also on, on the quality of the interaction, I think it's, this mention of. If we receive too much information, we might go in procrastination mode as customers or citizens.
And what happens then is usually that the quality of what I have to do will be much lower, which will mean... That's then the organization has to either check in or you missed the deadline. Sure, I missed the deadline. It was an 80 pages document and the deadline was buried in one little text.
Obviously, I forgot about it, and it creates this layer of then you didn't do your work, so now we have to do more work because you didn't do what we expected from you because there was too much information. I think this is also a very interesting point. It's not only about The information overload, like being nice with people because obviously we want to be nice with people, but also for the cost of for the organization of having them very stupid work coming back because you just have to check in that people really are doing what they should do, but that they don't know because it was buried in a 80 pages document.
Megs Armour: Totally. And this is, so if the service This is like a national public service and you have no other option, like getting a passport. You have no other option. You have to do it. Then in these services, they should be analyzing what is the impact commercially of someone saying this is too much. I need to take a break.
I'm going to stop this for a month. I'm going to put it to the back of my list. What does that mean in terms of them following up and chasing them and saying Hey, you've missed this deadline. We need to start all over again. Let me hand you back to the first function and just make this really messy.
I think that's interesting. But then, in the situation where you're working with a private organization that has direct competitors. If it's too much, they're just gone. So we don't even need to look at the cost of the negative journey. So yeah, I thought a lot about that and I was digging around has anyone done any research on the ROI of my information right time?
That doesn't exist yet.
Daniele Catalanotto: So we have to do that research. I
Megs Armour: think we have to do it. Yeah.
Information overload internally
Megs Armour: I think that's next. One, one last thing I think that your principles also really brought to mind is. Giving the context, like I'm a consultant who goes into businesses, who's often tasked with the process of, Hey, can you tell me exactly what my service is?
I don't actually know what it is. I've got a brief idea by our operating model and some products we have, but I have no idea what the service is. I don't know who the customers are. I don't know their end to end journey, pain points, interactions. Don't know any of that. It's hilarious how often that happens.
And I go in like mission with the team and I will say I feel like I'm like a roadmap hunter, like going in, I'm like foraging for information, share your process maps with me, give me that plan, operational data, fantastic, all right, customers, let's see what they're actually doing, not what you think they're doing, and at the end we come out and I'm like, Oh my God, this is so much information.
I'm overwhelmed with how much information, let alone the client who hasn't even seen it. And so it's my job, and it's any service designer who's a service design consultant's job, to take all this information and to make it less overwhelming for clients so that they can make decisions. So I think about, yeah, how can we take what we learned internally and externally and make it meaningful and actionable and digestible.
So I can give it to the head of product or a C suite or someone at the board and be like, Hi, we learned this and this is how you can make a decision going forward. Here's a thousand decisions in a lovely artifact. That has eliminated 20, 000 bits of paper. Let me help you now make a decision of how we can improve things.
So it's again it's who's the right person in the business that needs this information? What's the right time for them to digest it? What is the information they need to see? And I think these principles, you can take them when you're designing services internally in an organization too, which I like.
Daniele Catalanotto: It's, it's the front can find. That you think, oh, this we could apply to make the life of customers easier. You can then just basically apply it and say, hey, now let's make our lives internally easier. And yes, obviously we can reduce the amount of information because... Businesses. It's incredible the amount of information we share, and having this, there are these simple rules, like there, there was one one person who came up with a four sentence email, who said it should never be more than four sentences in a business email, which is interesting kind of rules of thumb also to bring this information of, hey, You have to invest a bit of time now, so that all the four people that are in CC, lose less time.
And sure, you invest one minute more, and again, in the end, the others will get it. There is this sentence, I think it was a famous writer who said who sent a very long letter to a friend and he starts with, sorry, I had no time, therefore, this is a very long letter. Which is very interesting to me, it's I had no time, therefore, it's too
Megs Armour: long.
So I haven't thought about how to synthesize it correctly. Interesting. Yeah. It's the time you spend upfront In designing information correctly that has that, your long term ROI. I always say, and I think transformation programs are a really good example of what we're talking about here and spending the time to design the right information to help people who are doing like a big public five year digital transformation program where they have millions of robots.
Millions of decks, like all of this information, like all over the shop and you come to the big like planning meeting and everyone's okay, let's start our two hour meeting by going through our 300 page deck. And this is where Service Design comes in and say, Hey guys, don't worry. I already spent some time mapping out.
What the end user experience will be in two years time, as well as all of the different technology and process and operational considerations that lie underneath that. So guess what? We don't need to have the 300 page deck and all the roadmaps. That's cool. But they can fit into this contextual journey.
That's going to anchor all of those decisions going forward. And if we need them, we can dive into them. And I spent that time doing that so that we don't have to do all this other stuff. So yeah, building on what you said, it's invaluable in the long run.
Good example of information load
Daniele Catalanotto: Do you have an example of. of the opposite of the immigration service, something where you say, this is a perfect example of a good service that gives just the right amount of information, just at the right time and exactly what I need.
Is there something in your personal life or business life where you say, this is something that we should All analyzed because they do it so well.
Megs Armour: Yeah, that's it. Okay, so this is just top of mind because I just came back from my surprise holiday, from my surprise engagement, but... Progress again. Thanks.
When I got to the hotel... Okay, so hotels, they typically, they're sending you emails. In the run up to getting to a hotel and you're getting emails about important things like payments and logistics and whatnot. But, when you get to the hotel, they say, Megan, I'm gonna, I'm gonna now communicate with you over WhatsApp because everything that happens here is gonna be fun.
And if something... If something like serious happens, like your account, your card got stolen and someone spent all your money, then we will, we'll call you, we'll do an email, but for all the fun stuff, we're going to do it over WhatsApp. So that's going to feel easy because that's contextually the right channel for the mode that you're in on holiday.
And I was beaming. I was like, yes, I don't want to look at my emails because I'm on holiday. Emails are from Monday to Friday. That's not where I am right now. And throughout the day they would WhatsApp me and I'd WhatsApp them. And it was beautiful. Just little tiny updates, lovely things that I was going to be doing or wanted to do or things that I had.
And I really thought about it and like they have. They've considered the right challenge, the right channel for this moment in time and sharing the right information. They're not sharing information about the payment, they're not sharing information about my flight, they're sharing information about drinks I'm going to be having.
And I love that and I'm just like, why aren't more fun hotel services? Maybe not the best example, just really top of mind. Like I thought about it for ages on the plane, I'm like, fun services where you've done all the admin, it should be on WhatsApp because that's the channel I'm in, in that moment.
Daniele Catalanotto: And it's so smart because it's saying, now you're in holiday mode. So we don't want you to go in your emails to be sure that you've missed, you're missing something about the holiday. Because, we open your emails, you will see the bill from your electricity provider and you say, Fuck, I have to pay the bill.
Or you will see that there is a work thing coming up and that's not good. But instead, WhatsApp, the worst thing you can see is a photo of your family member saying, I'm skiing. And it's okay, that's
Megs Armour: holidays. Exactly. The right channels is, and thinking it goes beyond this, like right information, right person, right time.
What's the right channel. And something I was going to, I was going to bring up actually, I was thinking about other things I would probably want to add it and going like beyond your 11 fantastic principles. I think as we had discussed in the beginning, like in this modern world, Services are constantly competing for our attention and our concentration and you're most likely doing a service whilst you're doing something else.
Like you're most likely accessing a service whilst you're walking, whilst you're on the bus, whilst you're working, watching TV on your phone, like cooking, watching kids, whatever. And so I think with this in mind, can like spending a lot more time digesting where users are consuming information and testing it, can it be done in a distracting environment?
So is it easy enough to digest this information whilst the TV is playing really loud? Is it easy enough to digest the information whilst you're on the bus and someone's chatting in your ear whilst music is playing? And I think building on the point we were just saying about thinking What is the right channel for that person?
Are they doing something else in that moment? I think it's fine if your service is really complicated like trying to get a visa to Canada. Fine, fair enough. That's complicated, but tell me Megs This is going to take you an hour of full concentration time, maybe three. And that's okay, but don't do anything else.
Don't distract yourself on your phone. Don't try and do this multitasking. And it's, recently our team was actually, we were helping a government body design a healthcare service. And we learned pretty quickly that most people would actually access this service.
And what's interesting And suddenly we just thought, I don't know if it's simple enough to use on a trade I don't even know if we've designed it thinking it would be mobile first. And it was so interesting. Suddenly we were like, Oh, if we actually want adoption, we really need to consider it. What is the right, yeah, how can we design it so that it fits the environment people are going to use it in?
So I think, yeah, understanding the environment to pick the channel and telling people if you need to focus or not is also very key for getting information right and ensuring people digest it.
Daniele Catalanotto: And this, there are two nuggets that I, nuggets of information that you're saying that I love so much. The first one is this.
Let me know in advance how long and how energy intensive it is. This makes a lot of difference, if it's 20 minutes of me answering a survey with yes, no, maybe, I can do that in a bus, no worries. But if it's 20 minutes or 5 minutes... So shorter time of you have to have your taxes document next to you and it's going to need some math, then it's okay, I need a desk.
I need to have my kids somewhere else. It's a complete different setup. And this is maybe, I think the first nugget of information that I really love is like preparing people for that information moment. And the second thing is,
The Real life disruption test
Daniele Catalanotto: do you know the five second test? The thing where we put a service to, or an image of something, and we show it to people for five seconds, and then we ask them, Okay, what's the information that you retain?
What is this doing? Because just trying to see how people get it. I think we should invent a new test. I don't know the name yet, but it could be the Grumpy Subway Test, or something like that, where we say, Go out, take your thing, do it in the worst subway line of your city. Yeah. See if you can do it or do it with a kid in your arms, and try to do it in that time.
Because if you have an infant, this will happen. You put some loud screaming noise and can you make it happen? This is, this will be a great
Megs Armour: test. Let's call it the real life disruption test because I really think that there are not many services that people genuinely sit down and think, I'm going to just do this.
I don't think there's that many anymore in the world. I really think most services are done simultaneously and you're competing for attention and there are distractions going on. I can only think of a few where I actually sit down in a room with the door shut on my own and think, I have to do this and I have to focus.
And it's the visa. No, it's things like a mortgage or a passport, but for everything else, yeah, why don't you try using my service on an overcrowded bus at rush hour with some kids whilst you have an AirPod in listening to a podcast. Now, how does the information land with you?
Daniele Catalanotto: A real life disruption test.
I think what we should do is, I will record my little one screaming. The next time he screams for an hour, I will record it. I will go in the streets and record some noise and we will make a special playlist. So that people can use it and say, Okay, now I'm trying it, it's like, how
Megs Armour: can I make it happen?
Yes. Okay. And we can have, maybe this can be like our own form of usability testing and we can be like, this is the playlist. We recommend you do it on this like really shitty boss.
And yeah, this is how you probe them if they're getting through it too easily as well. Yeah. That's a cool test. One. Okay.
The barbecue test
Megs Armour: One other test then that's come to mind in the topic of information and making it less overwhelming. So people, I call this the barbecue test at work. Whenever someone in my team shares like a really complicated slide or prototype or copy of text, whatever it is, I always turn around and I'm like, do you think if you showed this to your mom and dad at a barbecue, they would understand?
What you're trying to say do you actually, like, how would you actually explain this to them? And they'll explain it in very lovely, simple language and I go, okay, perfect. That's what we're using. Get rid of the flowery stuff. There's nothing worse than when you get. a really complicated piece of information from a business or from a colleague and you have to Google it and you're like, why did they pick this language?
Why did they pick coffee? That makes me feel like I, I don't know English myself. It's embarrassing. It sounds so obvious, but test your tone in coffee with your mom and dad. It's simple. Just and I think recently I have this experience. I really wanted to send money. From Canada to Scotland, international bank transfer.
You'd think in 2023, this is like a simple process. So I went to my two Canadian banks, HSBC and RBC, side note, Canadian banking, very archaic, sorry to anyone who works in that industry, it sucks. But I really tried to give them my money and send it to the UK. And I couldn't understand the process. It was like.
You need to do a wireless, interact, e transfer, two eligible accounts, special code, special number, this branch. And I was like, I don't know what we're talking about. You're like, I don't understand what is being said here. I Google, I was Googling it. I was like, what are these words? And then I go on to TransferWise or Wise now.
It's I wrote the language. It's it was my brain. I could just, I understood everything and it was the same process. It's just the language made sense. I think my parents could even do this transfer. So it's so important. Another test for us. The Parent Barbecue Test.
Daniele Catalanotto: Parent Barbecue Test. I love it.
Especially this is something that you can pretty much test. It's easy just by thinking, but also, there are so many tools that you put a text in it and it says for that grade level, someone can read that because it's easy enough to understand these are, these sentences are too complex, tools like a Hemingway app, who tells you this is way too long for a normal human, this kind of stuff is a, it exists.
So there is no reason to not do the barbecue
Megs Armour: test. Yes, so easy. And I think that people assume that people will be impressed with more expressive and flowery and complicated language. But again, the ROI of that is diminishing because people just flip. They're like confusing word. Don't know what we mean.
Going to go somewhere else. Like I didn't give these two banks my money because I couldn't understand what they were saying. Yeah, business implications, do the barbeque test.
Daniele Catalanotto: That's a good call to action. Now, on the stuff that you think, so you read the book, there were stuff that resonated with you, I see that.
The bad stuff: too granular
Daniele Catalanotto: What's the stuff that you say that stuff, not so good. Or, ah, I would improve that, this is, or it's just not my opinion, I have another opinion on that.
Megs Armour: Yeah, I'm not going to challenge any of these principles, they all make a lot of sense. I think my only negative comment would be that they are quite granular.
They are granular, simple interaction tips. And for me, I'm much more of a bigger person, bigger picture kind of person. So personally, I would have to add in more to go above and beyond. What's just in here. So I'd want to, I'd want to see something like, show me the ecosystem view, often services have so many handoffs that you don't really know about.
Maybe you need to get data from a third party, like a police report, and then share it back with me, and then maybe I'm going to take that to another third party company, like an AML or fraud or compliance people. And then there's this other. Surprise Vendor and Business Unit. And guess what? That adds days.
So I think often in public services, like yeah, visas, passports or financial services, like mortgages and things. There's so many players in your journey dipping in and out and you don't know about them. And it's going to make it way worse. And you not knowing it's going to make you frustrated as a customer.
You want to be able to see all these handoffs and see the ecosystem to set up expectations. So I'd add in stuff like you could make information less overwhelming by showing the full ecosystem view and who dips in and out when, and what that means for your timelines. So yeah, seeing who you directly and indirectly work with is helpful.
So maybe some bigger picture ones.
Missing in the book: pick communication channels in the end
Megs Armour: And then I think like we, I guess we spoke about this before, but picking your communication channel after, the information that goes in it. I think it's so often, especially in consulting, at the beginning of a project or a program, people jump to defining the end channel or format.
People are like, yes, we're handing over a PowerPoint deck, or we are handing over a service blueprint, or we're building an app, or a nudge, or a website, but we... We don't know the information that's going in it, so why would we have picked this live end output or touchpoint? Like, how can, we don't even know how they're going to use it or where they're going to use it or what they'll do with that going forward if they're using it on a bus, we haven't decided the, yeah what's in it, so we can't decide the channel. So deciding on that channel and format after, the information that goes in is maybe another one I'd, I would add in,
Daniele Catalanotto: but yeah. It's extremely strong, this idea of saying first start with what's the action that you want people to take what's the information that you have to share so that people take this action.
And then suddenly you realize, okay, what's the right moment. And so now we know the moment, what's the touch point, interaction, medium, channel where we can do this at the best. And it's a kind of a good flip because we are very. visual people. So therefore we always think, okay, oh, it's going to be an ad.
Oh, it's going to be a phone call, it's going to be an email. It's wait
Megs Armour: for it. Wait for it. Let's wait till the end. Yeah. And I'm sure reading your whole book, that's very clear, but if someone only jumps into this chapter, it would maybe be nice to be like, guys, it's actually first. Think about what the user needs in terms of information and then let's think about where they're going to use it.
And then let's decide on the channel or the format. There's an order to these things so that it's
Daniele Catalanotto: useful.
What this book doesn't do
Daniele Catalanotto: And I extremely appreciate your critique because the critique you're making is for me the perfect, there are sometimes people critiquing something and you say, Oh, it's good that you feel that way.
It's good that you feel that frustration because that was meant by design sometimes, and for me, there is something that I've always had the feedback that I love the most when it is, when people read one of my books and say, Daniele, your language, it's a bit simple, it's ah, okay. And sometimes, sometimes you say, fuck. It's a big problem for me. It's that's good to know, because then maybe don't read any of my books, because they are all like that. It's the goal is that the language is very simple. And on what you're saying, I think there are some very good books, on a bit more broader aspect of service design,
Book: Good Services
Daniele Catalanotto: there is one specific book that I always recommend, which is one, one level higher, which is Good Services, How to Design Services That Work by Lou Do.
Because for me, she nailed that part, exactly the one that you mentioned, this higher level, a bit more intellectual, but still applicable, not the bullshitty be empathic, where it's okay, good. That's very philosophical, but how do we do it? And she is right at the, at this little middle level, between philosophical, very tactical and practical and she is there at the, at that right level.
And I think for people who are expecting this type of information, I think one of the best books is definitely hers because it's unbeatable. And I think it's, that's exactly the type of feedback that I love to hear because it helps me to redirect people towards the right book, because this is one book that does.
Trying to do only one little thing, which is giving very tiny, simple things that people can apply to mobile. But I think if, for someone like you, who is a bit more at a, let's be honest, at a level of service design, and maturity of service design, which is very high, I would say then these types of books are definitely more your daily jam,
Megs Armour: I would say.
Yeah, I think you should make that clear up front. I think you should say I understand there's a scale of granularity to big picture and this is where I sit and this is my space and I'm owning it, and I'm not trying to be something else. And I think that's really cool. And I would appreciate that.
Daniele Catalanotto: And it's, in fact, it's something that is done in the introduction and what your feedback reveals to me. is that it should be done even stronger, and that's something that is interesting to me, seeing that, oh, this people need to know where the book stays, and by having the, if you're looking for this, That book is great, and having this granularity level is something that is quite quite strong.
What else did you dislike about the book? What else do you think, did you do that?
Megs Armour: There's nothing I thought. Damn, I hate this principal. He is talking shit. I think they all make they all just make sense. I genuinely love the structure of a real life example, a summary of what it means, and a question, an action question. I hate when you read a theoretical service design book and it's graphs and templates and you think, Okay, that's cool, but how do I apply that to what I'm doing every day?
For me, it was missing maybe the bigger picture stuff. It was missing contextual things like language, environment, and channel. Because that's exactly where my mind goes. There is, I hate to, I don't have a good negative gem for you other than that. So I'm sorry.
Daniele Catalanotto: And what's one resource that you will recommend that will solve this?
Going further
Daniele Catalanotto: What's a good companion where you say because, there is many books work well in pairs, there are some great books, for example, I love to read books about productivity with mindfulness books, and have both of them at the same time, because it gives you like this one approach is just very do work.
And the other one, chill out, it's gonna be okay. What's another book that you would say would be a good pairing for this one?
Book: The Service Organization
Megs Armour: Okay because your your tips are very granular and actionable, and they have a lot of utility immediate utility, something that's much more of a bible...
would be this book by Kate Tarling. I don't know if you've not, you've probably read it, the Service Organization. This is like the Bible for how explaining eloquently how services work in the real world and winning support for doing that internally. It's a world class book for setting up and scaling service design, forming rituals around it.
And I think actually pairing both ends. This is something you can take to actually design something today. And hey, this is like a Bible of how you should think about long term setting up and scaling, communicating service design is beautiful and could work so well for someone. So that would be my... The first little nugget of what I'd suggest people do, the entire time I was reading your chapter, I was also thinking about like visual communication inspiration.
There's a lot of what you're saying is you have to pick the right chunks of information and display it in a way that doesn't freak people out and make them flip to a competitor. And when I'm trying to get inspiration myself I use two tools that are maybe a bit more practical, actually.
Publication: The Pudding
Megs Armour: One of them is called the pudding. I don't know if you've heard of it. Basically like a digital publication explains ideas with visual essays. It's just really inspiring. Like it really helps you think about how could I tell a cool story with data? What, how are other people doing that?
And changes like the style sort of changes throughout all the different examples they have. So I checked that one out
Website: Information is Beautiful
Megs Armour: and then in a similar vein, the site called Information is Beautiful. It's just a site dedicated to making sense of the world and using like graphics and data visuals to explain and distill and clarify a lot of data.
And for me, when I'm, when I do my big investigation in an organization to work out what the hell is going on and I'm left with all this data, I'm like, What do I do with this ? I need inspiration. So I do turning to sites like that just to see how other people are doing it and what work and steal from them.
Video: Speaking CEO: Business Fluency For Designers
Megs Armour: So those, my last two, and I have one final last thing to share before I go.
Daniele Catalanotto: I see it's an exciting one. I see. It's an
Megs Armour: exciting one. Exciting one because it's from a Canadian design leader, which is cool. One thing I really thought about when I was reading your chapter was this video called Speaking Ciego and it's by a guy called Jess McMullen.
You might have heard of him. He's a design guru in Canada. The video is 30 minutes long. It's recorded in UX Lisbon in, I think, 2019 and it's all about designers understanding and speaking the language of C suite. And considering the right information, the right topics, the right time to communicate with C suite.
And I think in his video, he shares three really nice frameworks to help designers think and speak and prioritize like an executive, thinking like, what actually keeps CEOs up at night? What are you actually going to speak to them about? And look, designers don't need more methods to learn how to design solutions or customers.
People like you make that really easy. But I do think designers need better methods to communicate with businesses. And to communicate with executives and I think that starts with language and with sharing information and speaking CEO So that's a really cool video to check out and he's a Canadian design guru.
So I love that
Daniele Catalanotto: I think you've shared A lot of very good resources to go further I'm really appreciative of that because as I said, it's no book, no TED talk is good alone, it's like wine, it goes with something, you pair a good wine with with a good meal, and I think the pairing of books and information is something that we can always think about.
Thank you. Now you gave us a few pairs that people can play with and that they can have some lovely information meals, if you can call it like
Megs Armour: that. Yes, information meals. I love it. We've coined a few terms in this chat.
Daniele Catalanotto: We're quite creative. We can do a new terminology of design,
Megs Armour: Yes, perfect.
Okay. As long as you credit me on it. Absolutely,
Daniele Catalanotto: I will. I will. Nice. First, a big thank you for your time. Is there anything that you would like to give a shout out to?
Get in touch with EY and Megs
Megs Armour: Definitely. So in terms of EY, I like the philosophy that you're just, you're always recruiting in life. You never know when someone that you meet will come back into your life years later.
And I always love meeting new designers. So we're in a pool of 20 service designers, probably 150 digital end to end designers. If you wanna learn more about that, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love meeting with people across North America to chat about what we do. And then yeah, if you're, if you wanna chat to me about my sort of design career and what I'm up to, then I also love to just set up virtual coffee chats.
So Please don't hesitate to reach out and yeah, there's power in building a community of like-minded people I'm always looking to grow it. But yeah, I've really enjoyed doing this conversation and it was great for me too. So thank you.
Daniele Catalanotto: Thanks so much. And I'm sure people will get excited about all the barbecue tests and other tests that you have in your toolbox to improve services in the future.
in non traditional
Megs Armour: ways. Yes, definitely. I love that. There's more in the toolbox. We'll save it for next time.
Closing words
Daniele Catalanotto: Again, a big thank you for spending the time today, for investing the time and reading and commenting, and I've learned so many things today. I love this test that we created today together. I think that was a very interesting bit that...
I definitely will try it out right after with the little one, and for that, a big thank you to you, and I wish you again a lovely
Megs Armour: end of day. Awesome. Thanks, Daniel. Appreciate it. Catch you later.