Refuse to help people isolate themselves

"I hate this!".

"That's the whole point!"

I was at a service idea presentation by a learner from the Master of Service Design program of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Juliana Magalhães Cardoso, the learner, pitched an idea about regenerative tourism (1).

One feature of her service sparked a big conversation. In her plan, people had to call the local tourism agency to get connected with local experiences. A lot of students hated that idea and asked if it could be done online with a form instead as they are used to with services like Airbnb or Booking.

Juliana said that was exactly her point. She wanted to create, even force, a deeper connection between visitors and the local community. She didn't want it to feel like shopping from a catalog. What Juliana did here was make sure she didn't take the human element out of the equation. Her way of designing the service made sure she didn't create more isolation.

Action question

What parts of your service are you thinking to automate or make faster, but might end up isolating people more and removing human interaction?

Footnotes

(1) Regenerative tourism is a fancy world used by academics to say that tourism shouldn't be just about giving guests a beautiful experience; it also should be about guests leaving the places they visit stronger and more beautiful after their visit.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

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

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

Written with AI help:
This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

Make people affected by your decision part of the decision

Imagine this. A friend you haven’t seen for months, decides where your family will live. He’s making the final call. Flat, big house, or even a fucking castle. And guess what? You’re paying the bill and will have to move to this place! Sounds crazy, right?

But that’s how many decisions are made in today's work culture. The ones deciding aren’t always the ones who’ll live with the impacts of the decisions. If things go to shit, they won’t pay the price. They won't have to live the consequences. Someone else will have to deal with it.

Sure, maybe that long-lost friend is a real estate expert. Maybe he nows the market and has bought already many homes. But you wouldn't make him take that decision without you.

The same goes for our services. We need to bring in those who’ll be most affected by our decisions. It could be the people we serve, the community where our service lives, or the frontline workers who’ll make it happen.

Action question

Think about your next big decision. Who are the people most affected by it? Who isn’t part of the decision-making process yet? How can you give them a voice? Or better yet, a vote?

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

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

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

Written with AI help
This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.