Build your own niche Service Design community

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Swiss Innovation Academy

Hi lovely human 👋

Here is the overview of all the new Service Design content I've worked on in the last few days:

4 Service Design Principles:

Breaks: Take a fucking break
Sleep: Give a sleeping bonus
Inclusion: Start with the Excluded
Ending: Ask: are we the problem?

5 Service Design Q&A around building your own niche Service Design community:

Community benefits: Why Should You Build Your Own Niche Service Design Community?
Types of community: What Types of Service Design Communities Can You Build?
Event formats: What are simple formats you can copy for your Service Design Community
Format loop: Why should you re-use event formats?
Digital community: Should You Launch a New Digital Service Design Community?

1 Backstage Blog article:

Swiss SDN future: What's the next crazy goal I'm pursuing around Service Design?

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.

An illustration of a person making the "perfect" sign with his fingers while lying on his pillow

Give a sleeping bonus

When people don't sleep enough, it's as if they were drunk. That's one of the key insights that I took out from reading the book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (1).

When Mark Bertolini was the CEO of the health insurance company Aetna he decided to pay employees 25$ a night if they get enough sleep. That's 7 or more hours of sleep for 20 nights in a row. So your boss is giving you 500$ for sleeping well.

This is one of those crazy ideas I love. When people sleep enough they make better decisions (2). But I also think, that when people sleep enough, they stop to behave like machines. They realize they have natural needs. And if you realize that you might be also a bit more inclined to realize that the world needs a bit more rest and a more natural rythm.

Action question

How can you promote within your organization or team actions that are more natural and more slow?

Footnotes

(1) You can find my notes and favorite quotes about the book here if you're curious.
(1) Lack of sleep really leads to shitty decisions. In the book "The Organized Mind" there was this crazy quote:

« Sleep deprivation was ruled to be a contributing factor in some of the most well-known global disasters: the nuclear power plant disasters at Chernobyl (Ukraine), Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania), Davis-Besse (Ohio), and Rancho Seco (California); the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez; the grounding of the cruise ship Star Princess; and the fatal decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle. »

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.

Share feedback

Other principles I shared this week:

An illustration of a an astronaut next to a broken rocket

Take a fucking break

In short: Passion is great. But it can lead to tunnel vision. We need breaks to see if what we're doing still makes sense.

Read the full principle

An illustration of a person finding a key while looking under a carpet

Start with the Excluded

In short: Creating a service that includes those who usually are excluded makes the service also better for the mass.

Read the full principle

An illustration of a home setting. A person is leaving the home, while the other is waving good bye while crying

Ask: are we the problem?

In short: Sometimes the thing you're trying to fix is the problem that has to be let go of.

Read the full principle

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:

An illustration of a huge smile behind a person using a digital device

Why Should You Build Your Own Niche Service Design Community?

In short: Building a niche service design community offers numerous benefits:

Learning: It teaches you how to create and maintain a whole service and you'll learn a lot from the people you invite.
Contribution: It helps the larger service design community grow.
Focus: It helps people discover Service Design through another passion they might have.
Networking: It positively forces you to connect with new people.
Introvert push: It makes networking easier for introverts like me.

Read the full Q&A

An illustration of a world map with different people on it

What Types of Service Design Communities Can You Build?

In short: You can build a service design community by using existing formats or creating your own.

Service Design Drinks: Informal meetups for drinks and conversations.
Service Design Network Local Chapters: Global association with local chapters.
Service Design Jam: Two-day workshops tackling challenges.
Non Service Design specific: Communities like Creative Mornings, which are broader for creatives or designers in general.

Read the full Q&A

An illustration of someone copying files

What are simple formats you can copy for your Service Design Community

Here are a few formats that you can use when hosting a Service Design community event:

Lightning talks: 30 minutes, 3 insights, 3 questions. See examples.
Pecha Kucha: Someone presents 20 slides each for 20 seconds. See an example.
3x 30 minutes: 30 minutes interview or talk, 30 min Q&A, 30 minutes after hours unrecorded. See an example.
Intervision: People share challenges, 1 challenge is selected, clarifying questions are asked, everyone share insights and ideas, the person who brought the challenge summarizes what she takes away and what she’ll do. See an example.

Share yours

Why should you re-use event formats?

In short: Re-using events formats for your Service Design community makes it easier:

To onboard guests
To do the marketing for the events
For participants to know what they get into

Read the full Q&A

An illustration of a group of people meeting remotely in a video call

Should You Launch a New Digital Service Design Community?

In short: Yes if you do it on appointment. I wouldn't recommend to start any type of asynchronous community like a forum, Slack community, or so on as people are already

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:

An illustration of someone interacting with a giant calculator

What's the next crazy goal I'm pursuing around Service Design?

In this article I'm sharing why I think we need to have 100 Service Design Drinks in 2030 in Switzerland

Read full 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.

Younger generations have ‘lower risk’ of dementia: The risk of developing dementia is lower in people born more recently, a study has found, although scientists are unsure what is driving the trend. (Positive News)
French Senate approves bill to regulate ultra-fast fashion: The French Senate has overwhelmingly approved legislation aimed at regulating the ultra fast-fashion industry. The bill specifically targets Chinese e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu while imposing stricter environmental standards on the rapidly growing sector.

(rfi found via Vojtech Vosecky)
Jersey cuts greenhouse gas emissions by almost half since 1990: According to a new report, greenhouse gas emissions on Jersey - the largest of the Channel Islands, located between England and France - decreased by 48% between 1990 and 2023. The island emitted 357,626 tons of greenhouse gases in 2023, compared to nearly 700,000 tons in 1990. (BBC via Goodnews)

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