Planetary Perspectives for Service Design

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Swiss Innovation Academy

Hi lovely human 👋

Here is the overview of all the new Service Design content I've created in the last week:

Service Design Principle:

Interview with Samuel Huber: a 50-minute long conversation where we talked about Planetary Perspectives and uncovered 9 early Service Design Principles.

7 Service Design Q&A:

Workshop preparation: How long does it takes to create 3 workshop scenarios?
Analogue Workshop slides: How to prepare workshop slides when there is no projector?
Better scope: How can I explore more in more depth a Master Service Design topic?
Good vs bad: Are there good and bad topics for a master Service Design project?
Good Services: How to help learners discover what makes a good service?
Custom Canvases: Why do I love to make custom canvases for workshops?
Canvas Design: What makes a good custom workshop canvas?

1 backstage blog posts:

Note taking apps: In this tiny article I share why I use Apple Notes as a temporary place to take notes before publishing online or storing for the long term in Notion.

As a bonus you'll also find at the end links to 3 positive news from elsewhere to end on a high note.

Greetings from Basel, Switzerland.

Daniele 🧔🏻‍♂️

p.s. As always, you'll find more details below 👇
for when you have the time to read this newsletter.

Service Design Principles series

I'm writing the fifth book in the series Service Design Principles, where I explore simple tips, tricks and provocations that can help us make services a little bit less shitty for the people who use them and the planet that hosts them.

A conversation with Samuel Huber

In this conversation with Samuel Huber we explore Planetary Perspectives for Service Design.

Samuel Huber is a founder at For Planet Strategy Lab. It's an experimental organization situated in between leading businesses, interdisciplinary research and artistic creation.

The lab helps redesign the status quo by experimenting with alternative futures.

Samuel is also a lecturer in multiple institutions like the University of St.Gallen, the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, ZHDK, Zurich University of the Arts.

In this conversation, we uncovered 9 early drafts of Service Design Principles:

Ask: What's the planet for you?
Remember we've made huge transformations in the past
Use both democratic and top down approaches
Bring back the responsability to the wider organization, industry and systems
Move from quantity to quality
Move from short term to long term
Remember mapping is priorizing
Go for steady pragmatism over clashes or don't be a dick
Don't get stuck in the dick-otomy

During this conversation Samuel also shares the four key mindset shifts that he believes are necessary to have a more planet centric approach in our Service Design work.

Thanks Samuel for this insighftful and lovely conversation!

Listen to the 50-minutes conversation

Service Design Q&A

I'm slowly building a library of answers to the most common questions about Service Design. Here are the new ones:

Illustration of a person working on a spreadsheet

How long does it takes to create 3 workshop scenarios?

In short: for a 5 hour workshop with 15 participants I needed 1h30 to imagine three different ways of running the workshop with for each scenario a rough schedule, a description, and even for one of the scenarios a custom made canvas.

Read the full Q&A

How to prepare workshop slides when there is no projector?

In short:

design some posters or canvases and print them
draw by hand posters on flip chart papers
sketch live during the workshop

My favorites? Bringing a poster (printed or made by hand) as it helps me ensure that I don't forget key information during the workshop and I can just look at that and don't have to bring other notes.

Read the full Q&A

How can I explore more in more depth a Master Service Design topic?

In short: decompose the different parts of your topic (who, where, touchpoints, issues, etc) and then remix them to create new focused topic ideas. From there, start working topic on a few that resonate and see which one has more potential.

Read the full Q&A

Are there good and bad topics for a master Service Design project?

In short: No. There just good scopes and bad scopes for a topic. The topic isn’t what’s important.

Read the full Q&A

How to help learners discover what makes a good service?

In short:

Deconstruct a service and learn from examples
Use the Good Service Scale to evaluate services
Collect Service Design Principles to sharpen your observation skills

Read the full Q&A

Why do I love to make custom canvases for workshops?

In short:

It forces you to be clear on the end result
It clarifies expectations
It makes me feel like a tailor
It solves exactly the challenge without anything else
It makes workshops easier

Read the full Q&A

What makes a good custom workshop canvas?

In short:

A structure that tells a story: Use the layout to help explain how the different blocks relate to each other.
Clear guides: Add descriptions and guidelines to help people know how to use your canvas.
Give examples: Show with practical examples what should go in each block.
Size that fits sticky notes: Make sure that the sticky notes people will use during the workshop fit the different blocks of the canvas.
Clear licence: Let people know if they can re-use this canvas or not.

Read the full Q&A

Backstage Blog

I love to explain how I'm building educational content. I'm trying to be as transparent as possible so that it might motivate others to create such content too. These are the latest blog posts I've written:

How and why I'm using Apple Notes as a companion to my Notion setup

In this tiny article I share why I use Apple Notes as a temporary place to take notes before publishing online or storing for the long term in Notion.

Read post

Positive news from elsewhere

I’m an optimist and as there is so much bad news out there at the moment, I want at my scale to rebalance things by sharing also some positive news for service owners and creators.

World-first grandparental leave law: In Sweden a parent couple will be able to transfer up to 45 days of their parental leave to a grandparent (Positive News)
Plants are even better: Plants the world over are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than previously though (EurekAlert)
Easier to cancel subscription: In the US, the FTC’s ‘click-to-cancel’ rule will stop companies from making you take unnecessary steps to cancel a subscription. (The Verge)

If you want more positive news make sure to checkout the website positive.news that offers more in depth articles.