Daniele: Hello, Deirdre! It's such a big pleasure to see you again.
Deidre: Hello, Daniel. Greetings from Argentina. Very happy to be part of your international book tour. So thank you for stopping off at least virtually in Buenos Aires, and hopefully at some point in the future, you'll be able to come and visit in person.
Daniele: Absolutely. The one day I will do the book tour physically, I'm going to make sure to stop at your place because I know you are a hospitality expert who can show me the best places to stay. So I'm very excited about that too.
Deidre: Okay. Yes. Looking forward to it.
Daniele: So let's jump right into it.
Meet Deirdre
Daniele: Deirdre, when you go in a.
Birthday party. How do you usually present yourself?
Deidre: I'm a daydreamer and global citizen, I would say. I love to draw. I'm an illustrator. I'm also a family person. I've just been across the Atlantic to visit my family for Christmas. While I'm far away, I like to have time also with my family and the people who are close to me.
Yes. That's my introduction.
Exploring the Concept of ABC in Service Design
Daniele: tHis is the usual, casual presentation, I'm interested also in the more business side, because I know you are, one of those very nerdy service design professionals. And I'd like to know a little bit more about that.
Deidre: Okay. So I began around in 2011. Walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, which is a walk starting in France to Santiago de Compostela. And I began to reflect on my professional life, and I realized first I had a daily practice of drawing my surroundings. And when I stopped to draw, I would turn and listen to the wind, and if I turned in the other way, it was silent.
So that's what the wind does, if you're in a windy place. And I realized that we rarely stop to listen to our clients, to really think about the journeys people are going through. So I began with ABC, which is andar, to roam, buscar, to search, and compartir, to share. So this became a the cycle of my how I work.
So andar can be to roam around a business, let's say buscar to look for new ideas for innovation, and compartir is to share those findings. So it's a little bit like the service design, other service design maybe diagrams that you've seen, like the double diamond, where You come up with a bunch of ideas and then you bring them together and then you can innovate from there.
My process is very simple, ABC, and then later I added the term daydream. First, because I am a daydreamer and whilst in a business everybody who's involved in a daily basis is really inside. I like to look in from an outside lens and particularly a user's lens and daydream is the vision that then turns into action.
And just to complete the circle I've adopted a phrase many years ago, which is a Japanese phrase also used by Richard Branson, which just happens to be, I don't remember when I first read it, but it goes like this vision without action is a daydream, action without vision. is a nightmare. So then I come to the kind of my own Richter scale of the customer journey and Daydream being the best case scenario, Nightmare being the worst case scenario.
So that's. Everything in a nutshell.
Daniele: I love it. There is, there's one quality I especially like in, in how you frame that, the words daydream, roam, which to me have this more intuitive quality than How a lot of service design work, is sold today, which is very scientific, academic, numbers driven, and like the emotion is sometimes a bit forgotten, and and one thing that I really like.
In our interactions often is you bring back, the intuition and you often speak of, Oh, this made me feel like that. And instead of using, phrases like I think we should do that because I analyzed, which is a very different way of interacting. May I ask how did this happen?
Where you always, I'm very much in touch with this kind of intuitive side in your work, or is this something that changed maybe through this this journey that you did through the Compostelle way?
Deidre: I've always been interested in design As a mechanical engineer, my favorite subject was design, but I realized with many hours overnight in the drawing that I am much more better at refining existing scenarios and designing something from zero.
If I go a couple of years on from that I distinctly remember walking to Kodak headquarters in Tokyo. I was an English teacher at the time and at the time everyone was buying Walkmans. Showing my age a little bit. And I realized that when I bought the new Walkman, it didn't have some of the design features of the old one.
And actually this goes back to one of the design principles of your book, which is ask the person who's been around the longest. So the kind of museum staff of an organization. So sometimes I felt that innovation people are so focused on creating something new that they, Don't see the gems of existing products.
I've always been interested in the finer details of things, and then I have always drawn as well. Drawing helps me, if I see, if I'm observing a situation, it helps me distill things down to
## The Role of Drawing in Capturing Experiences
Daniele: And once I met you said something quite strong about drawing. You had this expression: Drawing from experience. Can you maybe share a little bit of that idea that you have, which is that drawing is a very good medium. to speak about the experiences, to give back observations that are made, especially in the hospitality business, which is also one of your
Deidre: expertise.
Okay, yes.
The Power of Illustration in Conveying Experiences
Deidre: I'm going to go back a few years to Leonardo da Vinci, who said that, I can't quite remember the phrase, but it was something like, the artist sees. It's way beyond what others only catch a glimpse of. That's, to me I love that phrase because, many times when I draw I think, oh, I can't capture this detail, but once you get into it, it's not that difficult.
The Importance of Tangible Elements in Experiences
Deidre: But in, you asked me about drawing related to hospitality, in 2021, I created a trademark which is Daydreamer in Residence, because when we're in a situation, for example, in a in a hotel, and we go through that whole process of booking and then checking in and etc. There are many organizations that evaluate the customer journey through a very organized process, so basically a spreadsheet where you are trained to fill in Maybe 300 observations and take many photographs and that's very good for compliance and other things, but it sometimes it misses the more holistic or intangible elements of your experience and how you feel.
Going from the intangible to the tangible, I find when I draw something, it just really brings out the beauty of the experience. It can also bring out some little nightmares, but I prefer in this conversation to talk about the positive things. And I find that they last a lot longer.
The Impact of Drawing on Memory and Empathy
Deidre: yOu know that we we worked together, you helped me bring out a series of 60 illustrations related to hospitality, and some of them are 20 years old, but when I look at them I'm taken straight back to the moment in time.
Daniele: It reminds me how You know when you read the book, like Harry Potter, this also shows my age to the audience when you read the book and then you see the movie, so much gets lost, in the technical aspect of it's a movie, and I feel there is the same with drawing and photography where through drawing, you can capture so much more.
And at the same time. You help the person who is watching the drawing to really empathize with the situation because she has to fill some blanks, where with a photograph, everything is given. Or at least we think so. And so there is much less empathy. And therefore it's like a less stronger device to help people see how was the experience.
And this is something that is. That I find deeply inspiring in your work because, your drawings for me, they have this strong quality of helping people not just, being in this doctor mode where we want to see what works, what doesn't work, symptoms and stuff, but instead go also into the, nurse mode where You know you are really with the person, and you're like, oh, we struggle together.
And, oh, I feel you, and which is a very different way of working with how services work and how they should be improved.
The Role of Intuition in Service Design
Daniele: I think, obviously both are really good, both ways they're very technical, they're more intuitive, but if we can balance both that's where it's very magic.
And I think we need people like you, who bring this. Counterbalance who say, hey let's be more maybe on the intuitive side, on the emotional side, and let's reveal that
Deidre: part. I would like to pick up on your comment about Harry Potter, because I had the privilege of working briefly with a Brazilian company that works very closely with Disney.
And so I I had a two week immersion in Disney and Universal Studios and Harry Potter and, So you have the book, you have the film, and then you have the immersive experience where you are walking through, Harry Potter's land or whatever. And but when you think about it, all of that goes back to a drawing.
So Walt Disney says it all began with a mouse, which he drew. And Disney for me is a wonderful example of illustration. So Disney I think they trademarked the term Imagineer. So their Disney Imagineers are sent around the world and I can't remember his name, but one of their chief Imagineers went to Africa and now in the animal kingdom there's a It's one of the higher end restaurants of Disney and I went there with a group and maybe I was the only one fascinated by everything around me, but they had cabinets with his drawings and his sketchbooks and I have been to Africa, to various countries in Africa, but I do remember very clearly a trip to Mombasa and when I came out of the restaurant and I walked through what he'd created I felt like I was back there.
Yeah, so that's why I've brought up Disney as the, as an example, because it's been a very strong influence for me, especially since that work in 2019, when I really understood where it all came from.
Daniele: It makes me remember, how important these drawings can be, cavemen, they did their drawings, they couldn't write, but they could, with a bit of blood and maybe some foods and stuff and ink, they could draw their experience.
And today we still look at that as not something, not only technical, but really, we need to analyze the culture, the myth that they had, and.
Reflecting on Personal Journey in Service Design
Daniele: And why not sometimes just go back to the roots of our communication as tribes, and say, Hey, this is a medium that we have for so long, that there's maybe so much ingrained in ourselves and maybe we can use it very strongly.
And as the caveman, if it's shitty, it's okay. That's, I think also You have the chance to be a very good artist and a very good illustrator, but for many people who might say, Yeah, but I'm not an illustrator, how can I use drawing? The cavemen did it, and sometimes their work wasn't so amazing, but still, today, we look at it, and we see quality in it, we can capture the emotion, we can capture the stories much better than if we had just three photographs in the
Deidre: cave.
Picasso famously said something like I knew, I had learned to draw like the masters by the time I was a teenager, but it took me all my life to learn how to draw like a child.
Daniele: Absolutely. And so I'm curious about one thing. So when I imagine you working for one of these hospitality organizations, be it a hotel or something else.
So I imagine you roaming, so basically being there, having your coffee, watching and observing and maybe illustrating. How does that work? What are the interactions it creates with the staff? How do people feel about it? Do they feel like observed and in a bad way? How does that work for you?
## The Role of Drawing in Capturing Hospitality Experiences
Deidre: So in general I could spend a couple of hours sitting somewhere and drawing and Sometimes nobody notices what I'm doing, but sometimes they do. And I remember there's a beautiful hotel in Buenos Aires called the LVR Palace. It's a very traditional hotel. It was based on the first Ritz in Paris.
And it's quite a formal place. And I was in their cafe and during the pandemic, I did quite a lot of drawing locally. And the waiter was just stunned. He was he couldn't believe that I had taken the time to draw. What he was serving me, so he complimented my coffee, et cetera, but I created a bond with him and then he moved to the Middle East and he reached out to me and he asked me to give him a reference, which I very happily did.
So that moment of interaction, I went back a couple of times, but I didn't know him before then, but that the connection that we made was a very strong one, such that he felt he could reach out to me on LinkedIn and ask me to give him a reference. And it's also made me realize you don't have to know somebody for 15, 20 years to give a reference because in he's probably the most attentive waiter that I had in that cafe, which I went to several times.
So that was a really nice connection.
From spying to noticing
Daniele: Hey, it shows something strong, which is that taking a picture, taking a photograph of something happening in a service. This is very different than taking the time to sit and illustrate it. For the people who are using the service, it's, it shows, oh, this is someone who cares.
It's very different because it's a long process. And also for people who are from the business. Because, it's, Oh, what I'm doing is taken into account into details because you have to observe a lot in order to draw. And it's less this paparazzi style of observation where it's like, Oh, I'm going to steal this picture.
Clack. Here it's more okay I'm going to watch what's happening and I'm going to take the essence of it. And I believe that this is something that I find extremely interesting because. It changes the relationship, us being, field researchers, in lab coats and with a watchful eye, like wanting to look what doesn't work and report it back, this kind of narrative to a narrative, which is much different of Having an artist in residence, as you say, having a daydreamer in residence who captures elements that are inspiring and gives them back as inspiring art pieces, which is very different, in the way we interact because often, these kind of shadowing things can feel a bit.
Or Mystery Shopper, they can feel a bit how can we say that? Intruding, maybe,
Deidre: and yes, and I've had that feedback before from different, I've had various conversations with. General managers to better understand what they need in terms of the mystery shopping sphere.
And some people are quite open, but others are quite close to having somebody come in to train the staff, or they just want somebody to come and go. But I've had positive reactions to, I've done some animated versions of my illustrations for training purposes as well. And the feedback has been very positive that it's very clear, it's very clear to understand, and it's inoffensive.
Because It's a drawing and it's as opposed to pointing out I was in this situation and this didn't work and this didn't work. It's turning it into quite a nice picture with opportunities to make things even better.
Daniele: Absolutely.
Deidre: And can I just add a point to, you talked about how the staff reacts.
So that caring aspect and interest works both ways. So when I've received a very warm welcome and great hospitality from an organization, I always go back. I Was in England for 10 days, and when we talked earlier, You pointed out three or four of my illustrations, and one of them was from the Peninsula Hotel in Paris.
I'm also an aviator, and I'm passionate about aviation. And I did an illustration of their rooftop restaurant, which is in homage to Lausanne Blanc. My French accent could probably be better, but it was the first the plane that, the first plane that attempted to cross the Atlantic. And I knew that the Peninsula had just opened a hotel in England, , around Hyde Park.
I decided to go and visit, just because I imagined it would be incredible and spectacular, and I had no idea that the rooftop restaurant in the new hotel is also it has two themes. One is aviation. And it paid homage to Concorde, and the second one is the automobile industry, luxury cars. I visited the day I was leaving the UK, I raced into London, and I had an immersive experience enjoying those two spaces.
And I went back because I'd had such a warm reception when I was in Paris, and yes, I decided to keep that connection or build a new connection there.
Daniele: I'd love to switch gears.
## Reflecting on the Process of Creating a Book
Daniele: You've been part of the community for this book series, Service Design Principles for a long time.
And so you've been both a reader, a reviewer, and now even a proofreader, which is something that we will, we'll speak a little bit more right after. But. I'm curious, how do you read these kind of books? Because I know that you have practical exercises to make out the most of these types of books that I know can be sometimes a bit overwhelming.
There is 100 pieces of information in one tiny book. And how do you work with that? How do you turn these 100 inspirations into something that you can use in your practice?
Deidre: I Think, Obviously, now you have, what, 400, so it's a big number, and I started off, I think I bought your first series online, and it was a video series of the first 100 principles, and then I was one of the brief readers, I think, for the second one, 200 to 300, and There, I just I got a little notebook and I just wrote down my, I think it was my top 10 because I knew that 100 was too difficult for me to retain just reading on first go, but I wanted to pick out my favorites.
So I, I took your 100 principles and I took 10 percent of it and I thought well, they're the 10 that I most identify with and that could be most useful for me. And then fast forward to the last quarter of last year, when I you asked if I would be interested in proofreading this version, and I did something similar.
In fact, in the, while I was proofreading you'll remember that I started writing to you in the notes I like this one, I like this one, maybe we can discuss this one more. And I was very pleased that the last principle, last but not least, 400 was a very important one for me because going in as a a service design practitioner or as a consultant or as a daydreamer even, it's really important to appreciate the existing status quo and Bye.
Really create empathy before coming up with a new idea, which was your principle number 400. So continuing to answer your question, when I was in England I bought this book for Agenda for 2024, and it's actually from the Victoria and Albert Museum, and it's a fashion illustration diary. So I've already started because I love Diaries that start with the year before, so this one starts on Christmas Day, starts from the 25th of December.
So I'm only going to use this this diary for illustrations. So in my regular practice of illustrating, I want to create a daily ritual. goIng back to how we could use some of the exercises in your book, now you have 400 some of your readers might want to take a service design principle a day.
Come up with 365 of them for this coming year. Or let's say 52 of them, once a week. Pick up one of your service design principles and then have, a weekly review of the principles. So I think anything we do daily, weekly, monthly, as long as it's on a regular basis helps us using that material instead of, I remember somebody saying if you go to a conference you're not supposed to just put the material in your library, you're supposed to put it into action.
So I think the same goes for your book. And also you've also divided it into sections. So that's also very useful. Somebody could say, okay, I'm going to spend, in January, I'm going to look at this section, then February at this section, and do it that way.
Discussing the Process of Proofreading
Daniele: Awesome. I think it shows really well how, a book like that doesn't have to be read, like you binge watch a Netflix movie, or a Netflix series oh, I have to read it in one go.
But you can also, have different ways of going through it. That's why also I like to call it like a toilet book, it's maybe a book that you maybe just read a principle every time you go on the toilet, because it's a two minute read. And it's a simple thing or having the routine that you say it's.
Once a week, I'm going to take one and read it, or maybe it's once a day, but I like this notion of having a routine. I think this is one element that is extremely strong. How can we build a routine around it? And then the other part, which is How can we make a selection? Because these are inspirations, they are ideas, tips.
But obviously, when when your mom gives you the her 200 tips that she learned over her 60, 80 years of life, there are some that relate to what you're doing and some where you say, this is your life, not mine. And that does it doesn't fit. But it's, it was interesting to hear.
And I think that's something that I'd like to highlight here, which is having the habits is a good is an important thing. So to keep it in a routine, but also to, to be mindful of. Not selecting over too much and taking them as inspirations and some fit in the moment, in the context, and some others don't, and that's fully okay.
Deidre: And then there's another way, another, Very useful, especially reading digitally. If you have a challenge I'm going to take the example of signage. So if you have a challenge in your business, you can say, Okay I need to do something around signage. And you'll be amazed that there are 84 references in your book to signage.
yOu can just go through them and get lots of inspiration that way. So keywords for a current challenge. I'm sure over the 400 principles, you'll find many keywords are in
Daniele: there. Absolutely. I love how you're suggesting new ways of reading a book. So basically a book is just is not intended as this start from the start and ends at the end, but you can redesign also that, I love how already what all, what we have mentioned having routines, we have mentioned having a way of selecting researching keywords, maybe also using randomness, just flipping through, opening and say, okay, how does that relate to what I'm doing today?
These can all be ways that we can go a bit beyond the books and maybe revisit them. And I think that's not something that is just true for this book, but obviously for many of these books that have a lot of content, a lot of knowledge in them so that. Maybe we can revisit them in those ways.
Deirdre's visual Principles Library
Daniele: And there is another thing that I'm very curious about. You are also someone who collects pieces of experiences in what I would call a principal's library, observations that you want to take and that will help you remember advices, nice things that you can reuse in in in order. In other projects and I'm curious how, what's the format that you're using for that? How did you get started? And what are your advices for people who say, Oh, I'd like to do that, but I don't know how to write.
How can people do that?
Deidre: Okay I first, the first article I had published, I think, recently, or in the last 10 years or so, it was a lifestyle magazine, an aviation magazine, and I approached the owner of the magazine and pointed out that the English translation wasn't perhaps a true translation of the Spanish version.
He invited me to translate the magazine, and then I commented that the art section could be more global, so I began to write the art column. It came out of just a chance meeting and that's how I started. And and more recently, in terms of my own series of illustrations, I think You encouraged me.
I started, I start the ABC process, by the way, with carte blanche because as a guest, as a customer, we don't walk into a hotel with a spreadsheet thinking, I'm going to check this off. It seems like that sometimes on review sites like TripAdvisor these days, but really we go to have a good time.
Even if we go on business, we're not thinking about. We're hoping that there will be a good desk situation, that we'll have good internet, but we don't go in with a checklist. So I always begin with carte blanche. But then, of course, we have to build structure to something in order to get a result from that.
I, in talking about the illustrations, I, a few years ago I did a trend forecasting course at St. Martin's College in London, which was very, really eye opening. So it taught me to look at future trends, and one thing that I've noticed in the last few years is that One way we're moving towards a paperless society books are coming back.
I have on the table there some of my favorite books. A lot of them are from Asseline, which is one of my favorite publishers. Some of them have beautiful illustrations in them. One is called Hotel Secrets. And this little journal was given to me by the marketing manager at the Standard Hotel in London.
And I love it for a couple of reasons. It's textured. And this is actually the, a copy of the facade of the hotel, which is wonderful. And when I go into a hotel, I always ask for some stationery. And in the worst case scenario, I'll be given one piece of paper, which always makes me giggle. Normally the person is very generous.
I'll get different And here I got a journal, which was beautiful, and I received it last year, and it's a work in progress, but the first illustration I did was of the library in the hotel. And the hotel has recreated like a city library, like a local library inside the lobby, with the book, kind of books that I remember as a child, which is a very long time ago.
And I've been noticing libraries in different hotels. When I did my drawing series going back to Asseline and a beautiful hotel in London which is called the Arts Hotel, I, it was my second or third illustration and I called it the Digital Detox because the hotel partnered with Asseline to have a selection of their books in every bedroom very nice for the guests.
And they had also sourced old telephones from, I want to say 80 year old, 90 year old telephones from around England, and they were the only phones in the room. So there was nothing digital in the rooms, and I love this idea of digital detox. That was about eight years ago. And so over these eight years, I've noticed more through the, through drawing and my observations that books are, have made a big return.
And. I think it was in 2021, there was a hotel conference in Manchester and it was Celine was one of the sponsors. Why am I connecting all these things to the drawings is that, that I find later on that the relevance of what I'm drawing. Sometimes it's a trend that's coming, sometimes it's something timeless like.
A beautiful pool experience, how can you create that, and that doesn't change over time going back to how to categorize these and, Make it more logical from the original daydream. That's what I'm working on now. So out of the 66 current illustrations, I want to add 14 more to make it into 80 and then categorize them into different guests different stages along.
Our experiences,
Tips when starting to build a principles library
Daniele: There is an advice that you're giving here, which is: Don't start with a master plan just getting started, collecting bits of experiences, tips, pieces of research, whatever resonates with you. And then with time, suddenly categories emerge. And oh.
For in your example, it was books, oh books make a comeback. This is an element that we have to take into account into in hospitality. And because you see that you have so many observations about books, suddenly you see, oh, there is something in here. And I like this aspect of not coming in it.
With this master plan, I'm going to have five categories in my principles libraries, and I want to have in each categories absolutely 20 principles. And just start collecting things, and suddenly you will see what emerges, which is a very different way of working than what we used to do, looking for usefulness right now, and instead being in, okay, what emerges?
And maybe there is something. Why did I relate to that? And the other advice that I love in what you're saying is you started with drawing instead of writing which writing can be for some people a tedious tasks, did I choose the right words? Oh is it too long? Is it too short?
And then you can edit a lot but you went with drawing where you were comfortable with. And I think the advice that I see in here is: The format of a Principles Library doesn't matter so much! Is it voice notes? Is it you making videos for yourself? Is it quick notes on sticky notes?
Is it drawings or is it written form? Whatever, as long as you capture elements and that you come back to them and then suddenly you rearrange them into categories, you will learn a lot. Yes,
Deidre: I think we have various. These formats open to us, and maybe, sometimes I find drawing is the most difficult one, but I'd like to show you an example of the book this is a book that I'll show the drawing first, actually, because the drawing the drawing of this book made me realize some details in the chairs in the oak bar that I mentioned, because they are also weaved.
The book is around 60 years old. So I, I did it in black and white. But you can see that there is a texture there. And then I started to draw the walls of the bar, which is this 15th century oak from France. And if you look at the original book. It's got a beautiful texture, and it's gold, and this is something we can't recreate digitally, ever, I don't think.
Yes, I'm very much inspired by tangible objects, as well as experiences.
## Deirdre's proofreading experience with this book
Daniele: Absolutely. And there is one part that I'd like to zoom in a little bit about your professional life, which is the collaboration we have at the moment with the proofreading of the book Service Design Principles 301 to 400.
And I have to say you, you had a very deep impact on the book because It's so different for me to work with proofreaders, who are experts in language versus proofreaders like you, who are experts both in language and in the experience industry and who have a deep understanding of the ideas and the processes and all of these elements.
So I'd like maybe to hear from you. How was it proofreading that book? What was that experience like?
Deidre: It was a very rewarding experience. It was fun. We talked a lot. Your feedback was immediate and very clear. But as when I began to, often if I'm given a task, I start doing something else because that's part of the daydream.
So I was trying to get to the words and then I was distracted, particularly on the left. Turn side where you had these lovely illustrations and lots of numbers. So my first feedback, as was not about the text, it was about the quantity of numbers and the additional numbers that were on the page that kind of took away from the number of the principle.
I guess I did go beyond the. The task of pre-reading, but right from the beginning because that was something that was just getting in the way from me every time I turned a page.
Daniele: Yeah. And it was so inspiring to me to get that feedback, of someone reading the book and saying. I want to read the book, but you're making it hard for me.
It's a pain because there are so many numbers. There is the principal number. Then I had back then still a little footnote number that brought back so that people could then read, go back online to the place where I have the timeline of these principles, then there was.
Page numbers, and then you also had then on the right side, footnotes in the text. So lots of numbers, which for me, I didn't see them because obviously I was too much in it. But for you, it was like a very emotional thing. I remember our conversation where you went, Oh, I'm stuck. I'm blocked by the numbers.
And it was so interesting to, to see that. And then to see how together we, we reimagined a bit that experience saying, Hey, why do we need page numbers? Let's remove them. We already have. Principle numbers. Why do we need to add the reference of each principle? How you can go further? Within the principle, why not keep that at the end of the chapter, at the moment where you want to go further?
When you're reading one principle, you're not already ready to go so much further. And I think this tiny element that you observed had a kind of a profound impact on how we redesigned parts of the book. So I'm so thankful. That's You were there and that you daydreamed a little bit while doing it because it changed the book.
And so not just in the words, but also in the way that people go through it. So thanks so much for that. You are
Deidre: very welcome.
## What should change in the next edition?
Daniele: And maybe for the audience. So you read that book what are things that you say for the future that you will change in the way this book is made? Or the series is made.
There will be one more book that will come out. That's a promise that I made myself to myself is that I'm going to go up to 500 at least. So it will be one more. And so what would be a piece of advice that you would give me to improve the next one?
Deidre: Oh,
Daniele: I know this is a question that I didn't that I didn't reveal before.
Deidre: Okay I think I would have to think about it. I think, I definitely think stick to I have another book here to show you I just received this as a gift when I was home, it's A Hundred Writers on Food, it's huge. So a hundred is a good number, a very good number as you're doing an international book tour, maybe you could have just be inspired looking at this book title.
I always get inspiration from everything that's been done before in some shape or form, so maybe it can be principal. Service Design Principles around the globe. onE of the people you interviewed mentioned that something was more, I think she was from India, maybe. Yeah, it might be. Did you go to India?
Yes. On the book tour? Yes. And she had mentioned that I was really inspired by her experience and her expertise, and she mentioned that maybe some of what she does is not necessarily relevant in other parts of the world, and I actually thought that it was. Sometimes we think, oh, it's, maybe it's not relevant to others, but so that's, could be a nice idea that the wrapping up the five, four, 400 to 500, you could have some kind of global things done specifically in a region or a country and then shared globally.
So that could, that's one idea.
Daniele: Like a hundred principles from a hundred different countries.
Deidre: Yes, exactly.
Daniele: Yes. oKay. That's definitely an inspiring addition to the and could be a very interesting way to close maybe the series, at least for a
Deidre: moment. Yes. Or you could do a hundred cities. That might be easier.
Yeah,
Daniele: it made my feeling a little bit easier,
Deidre: indeed. Because when you encouraged me to do the 60 drawings, it's another thing I want to do. I want to put them into an alphabet. But as I was trying to do them daily, that was too much for me. So I did A, B, C, and then it just, I forgot about it. Because the purpose at the time was getting it all done.
So then now, as you say, now you've got the time, each time you do 100 to reflect and refine a little bit more of how you do it, then I think yes I like the idea of a hundred countries, but maybe a hundred cities is more manageable.
Daniele: Yeah, I, it's definitely an idea that I'm going to explore.
And and who knows, maybe the, that one will be, will have either cities villages or countries as a kind of a different way to to read it or explore it. Could be very interesting.
Deidre: I'm going to stick with India for now, because I have an Indian cookbook, which is 50 curries of India.
I've given it to, I've gifted it to many people and it's my Cooking Bible for Indian Food, and the author was marketing manager at a hotel, actually, and she was asked to elevate the standards in the restaurant, so she went on a tour around India, and she went to the villages, and she found the best chef in the village for this dish, and so I love using the cookbook, because every time I look for a recipe, I read the story again.
Daniele: Yeah, it's so I'm going to go on a bit on a tangent but but obviously, at that time in the video, people who are in, are the ones who are very curious. So we're allowing ourselves to go maybe a bit in the, in uncharted territory here. But for me, this reflecting back and taking the time with you to reflect also doing this kind of book tour was something that was very inspiring.
Great. Yeah. And I'm thinking, how would it be interesting to, instead of doing a hundred principles, where it's me coming up with the principles and instead of asking people, to submit stuff which I tried worked okay, was a bit of a nightmare. I think both for people and me
Deidre: and there was a nightmare.
What coming up with
Daniele: the, no, like collaboration. Yeah, it's it's been it worked well in some aspects, but in other aspects, it was a bit of overwhelming, the quantity of messages to go through was a lot. And then I couldn't give back, as much as I wanted, which also then had a bit of an impact, I think on, on the expectations that people had, because I decided I could get very much in in depth and then and then I couldn't anymore because I had just to stay to the deadline.
And and here, one thing that changed for me in in this book tour was that, you have a scheduled hour to be with someone, and just one person, it's a very different interaction, where you can really go deep and I'm using your inspiration, what if in for the next book, we will organize something which will be instead of the book tour, showcasing the book, how it is, the book creation tour, where it's, meeting a hundred people from a hundred cities and maybe they are not service designers, there are lay people people who make services happen and and having a conversation with these a hundred people and then.
Coming out with each, from each conversation with one principle from the life of that person could be something quite inspiring, quite crazy, maybe, but yeah I'm stealing bits of your ideas and trying to build on it.
Deidre: yOu mentioned not service designers.
So I would just like to give a shout out to somebody who inspired me this year. Her name is Alicia. She's nine. She's my cousin's daughter, and she's also an artist, and she sent me something she'd found we all make mistakes. So everyone should carry a pencil with an eraser on it.
I Actually, I started buying erasers and having them in my bag and using pencils because it's a great way of iterating and improving and going back and Just, eliminating the mistakes, starting over. And and also I love the fact that she has such a wise outlook and shared her wisdom with me at the age of nine.
Daniele: Indeed. Indeed they are. Often we get the wisdom at the, in the places where we don't look for it. Definitely. Definitely. It's been a wide ranging conversation. It's a wide ranging conversation, I think that's how we say it in English. Thanks so much for it. Is there anything that while you prepared yourself for this call, where you said, Oh, this is something that I'd like to share.
This is something that I want to speak about, that I'd like to explore, that we didn't explore yet?
The Importance of Encouragement
Deidre: When I was I think I'd like to talk about encouragement. Because if, I think encouragement can go a long way, and you encouraged me to publish my drawings, and the other day when I went to the hotel in London the receptionist who was very nice and I explained that I wanted to spend some time in the restaurant, which is a new restaurant also, and it wasn't actually open, and she was very helpful she found the manager for me, and then she said, oh I've always wanted to write.
And I said, oh, so we've had a couple of conversations I wrote to her and I said, why didn't you start? You could start now. And in, in, in various situations, I've been told that at various ages. My cousin's son is now a pilot with Emirates. He's a captain, a young captain. And when he was 15 and I was 40.
or just before 40 I told him I always wanted to learn to fly or to be a pilot, actually. And he said, what's stopping you? And I thought, oh there isn't really anything. And I found a school the next week. So I think when, if we have something in mind, maybe we're daydreaming it. We don't know how to put it into action.
It's always important to encourage others to, to go ahead and to follow their story to follow their dreams. So thank you for encouraging me.
Daniele: Pleasure. And I think that's a very good call to action here, which is, whatever is something that you're putting on the side today while you're watching this.
And I'm sure that as people are listening to this conversation, they have something that, a little light bulb that comes like, Ooh, project A, project B, project C. If you're thinking about one of these projects at the moment, as a viewer or listener maybe think, what could you do today?
What's the smallest thing that you could do today that gets you a little bit nearer to that? Project A, Project B, Project C. It doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be grandiose, or the master plan, what's a tiny thing that you can do and maybe share it with someone. It doesn't have to be the world, it can be just a friend, to say, hey, I googled pilot schools.
That's already a lot, it's not, I selected one, but I googled pilot schools. And what will happen is that if you send that to a dear friend, the dear friend will say, Oh, you googled it, finally, awesome. So which one did you select? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then people will send you a lot of encouragements and it will go.
Go further. So I think this is a very cool call to action that you're giving for the community here.
Call to action
Daniele: And so as an ending note I think you gave a lot in this conversation, you gave a lot of advices, tips also, I think You give also something which is very important today, which is a a shift in how we look at, processes like shadowing or mystery shopper from a more emotional, intuitive, carte blanche, you said also, aspect, which I think are all elements that are a bit counterintuitive with a lot of what you're Today's service design culture, which are very important.
And so you gave a lot, but I'd like to ask you, what can people do for you? Is there something that people can do for you to give you back?
Deidre: yOu can also, you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn. I also have a, an Instagram account, a new one because Instagram took my account away as this has happened with many people in recent months.
And so I'm starting over. You could follow me there, it's Daydreamer in Residence, and yeah, reach out to me to see if there's anything maybe I can do for your organization through my drawing on experience.
Daniele: Awesome. So check the Instagram, check the art, especially we've highlighted already a few of the drawings here in the video, but once again
Diedre, it's been a big pleasure to be on this writing journey with you, to have your encouragements over the years, because you have been a very encouraging force and also to have you for this Edition as a proofreader who goes beyond.
Thank you so
Deidre: much. Thank you, Daniel. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.
Conclusion and Farewell
Daniele: Bye
Deidre: bye. Bye.