Make "having a life" a prescription or rule

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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:

1 invitation to a local Service Design meetup:

Lucerne, Switzerland: Meet other Service Design nerds, hangout and ask your questions. An event hosted by Darija Catipovic and the Swiss Service Design Network.

1 early book review

Service Design, 2nd Edition: From Insight to Implementation by Lavrans Løvlie, Andy Polaine & Ben Reason

2 Service Design videos

Oleg Koss and Liza Pidopryhora: How can we design services in times of deep crisis?
Everyday Service Design: A webinar with Leili Mirzakhalili hosted by the Swiss Service Design Network.

2 Service Design Principles drafts:

Human: Make having a life a prescription or rule
Limitation: Set a space limit

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.

Hangout with Service Design nerds in Lucerne

Friday 26th of September 2025, 18:00 at Suite Rooftop Lounge & Bar in Lucerne

Join host Darija Catipovic for a relaxed evening with other Service Design enthusiasts. Meet new friends, hangout and ask Service Design questions.

About the event

This Service Design Hangout in Lucerne is an informal gathering that brings together curious minds and passionate practitioners to connect, share ideas, and learn from each other in a relaxed, welcoming setting.

Whether you’re just discovering Service Design or have been shaping services for years, come join the conversation.

About Darija

Darija is a freelance Service Designer working in Switzerland.

Darija has worked as a Service, UX, and UI Designer in Switzerland, Serbia and Germany.

Before her transition to Service Designer, Darija worked in innovation and art direction roles at organisations such as Procter & Gamble and The Integer Group.

Darija is also a community lover who loves to support other Service Design enthusiasts through her volunteer work for the Swiss Service Design Network.

Save your seat

A banner showing the book cover of Service Design 2nd edition with the titles: Now available for pre-order. Save 15% when you order from Rosenfeld.

This book changed the trajectory of my life. I’m sure this second and new edition will do the same for many people.

12 years ago I read the book “Service Design: From Insight to Implementation” written by three nerds called Andy, Ben and Lavrans. Their book made me transition from creating okayish visual things, to making humans hate less the organization that serve them.

It’s the book that showed me that what I was trying to do had a name. That name is Service Design.

It’s the book that made me think: “You can you learn this!?”.

That’s how days after finishing it in 2013, I was Googling (we still did that then) “Service Design Switzerland”. I ended up finding the Master in Service Design of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. There I found one of the authors of the book. Andy Polaine.

12 years later we work together in that same Master with Andy.

Today, “Service Design: From Insight to Implementation” stays true to the many qualities the first edition had. The book offers a no bullshit, very practice oriented way of discovering Service Design. It gives the theoretical bases that ensure that you know what you’re doing. It takes a complete look at how to imagine, build and maintain good services. It will for sure make many fall in love with Service Design.

The second edition of the book also brings new qualities!

It brings new case studies like one about a “Citizen Centric Police”. It now brings a long term view in the book. The first edition showed the potential of Service Design.

This second edition shows how the implementation of these ideas has worked out over a decade. And it does it in a critical, by showing the good stuff (insurances that really care about humans), the “meh” (bike sharing services) and the bad stuff (all digital lives) too. The book even went through a bit of a grown up diet.

The three nerds took out the book some of the knowledge that back then was pretty new but today is very standard for many professionals.

So, this second edition, is clearly a better classic: up to date, slimmer, sharper and with much of the wisdom that age can give.

If this book changes your life only a tenth of what it did for me, it is already a must read book. Happy reading!

Pre-order the book

A banner showing the text "Everyday Service Design with Leili Mirzakhalili" and Leili's portrait

Companies get to hire service designers to fix their problems. Why can't we do the same for our personal problems?

In fact we can!

And Service Design practitioners like Leili Mirzakhalili do it everyday by being their inner Service Design consultants.

During today's webinar Leili shared four tips and answered many questions around this idea of applying Service Design in your everyday life.

The recording, links to recommended resources, like the good work of Giovanni Ruello and the automated transcript are all available now.

A big thank you to Leili for all the work she put in this event and for sharing these inspirations with the Swiss Service Design Network community

Get the full recording

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.

Interview with Oleg Koss and Liza Pidopryhora

How can we design services in times of deep crisis?

That’s what we chatted about with Oleg Koss and Liza Pidopryhora in an interview for my next book on how to create services that serve both humans and planet.

Oleg and Liza are two Service Design enthusiasts who both work at Lanka, a customer experience and Service Design agency in Ukraine. Oleg founded the company and Liza works in it as a Consultant and service designer.

Yes these two lovely humans work on Service Design topics in Ukraine. A country going through a deep crisis because of war. It has been really inspiring for me to see how life and work in Service Design has continued with an impressive resilience. I truely think that what they are learning and experiencing every day can help us in other types of crisis too.

This conversation with Oleg and Liza inspired me 11 early Service Design Principles to better serve others in times of crisis. Here are my five favorites ones:

Number 1: Serve to give hope in crisis: When emergencies and crisis happen, try to keep parts of your service open to give a sense of normality. Offer moments where people can also get served and don’t have to only survive or defend themselves.
Number 2: Safety doesn’t mean closing shop: Safety is not a black or white thing, it’s a negotiation. If your service can’t be totally safe, closing it fully might mean that you make people even less safe. Find ways to stay open in times of crisis to continue to give access to essential services.
Number 3: Think about what happens when people get trapped in your service: Do you have some basic necessities or an emergency kit for people to survive in your service if they are blocked in it because of natural disasters or war events?
Number 4: Inclusion is even more important in crisis: In war and crisis times, people with disabilities are the ones that suffer even more, how can you service serve them first?
Number 5: If you don’t have an impact, change context: Service skills can make a real difference, find a context where those skills are a necessity and not just a nice add-on. Change company, change industry or even country to serve others that deeply need you.

Thanks so much to Oleg and Liza for this lovely and humbling conversation.

Listen to the full interview

An illustration of a doctor with a note pad and a nurse with a radiology photograph showing bones

Make having a life a prescription or rule

Many therapists and doctors in Switzerland prescribe to patients… a walk in nature. Not pills. A walk in nature.

The doctor of a a good friend of mine, who was going through the start of depression, prescribed to my friend… cooking. Cooking is something that brings a sense of calm to that person. And because the doctor said it, it didn’t feel like doing something that was not necessary, but something to get well prescribed by some serious person.

In coaching sessions with students, I have prescribed to students to take a break where they are not allowed to work on their project. (1)

As service creators, service worker or owners, we are sometimes seen as authority or serious figures. And sometimes it’s our role to use that little authority or influence we have to remind people to be… people. Not machines.

Action question

Where in your organization or service could you use your influence to prescribe actions that make people more human?

Footnotes

(1) Speaking with other coaches and psychologists I’ve often heard they prescribe similar things. This was made even clearer to me in the Thesis of Tetyana Kalyuzhna who wondered why nature walks are so much prescribed in Switzerland.

Share feedback

Another principle I shared this week:

An illustration of a person looking in a huge box that contains a lot of digital elements: apps, screens, etc.

Set a space limit

In short: Setting limits to the amount of things you'll do, space you use ensures you don't overwhelm yourself or the planet.

Read the full principle

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.

Phone bans work for better grades: "In a first-of-its-kind trial involving nearly 17,000 students in India, pupils were split between classrooms where smartphones were prohibited and classrooms where they were permitted. Students in the former achieved markedly better grades than those in the latter, the study found, especially students who were struggling academically." (Positive News)
Automakers are meeting the EU’s CO2 targets:" A new study shows that nearly all major European carmakers are on track to meet the EU’s CO2 targets for 2025 to 2027. The main drivers are the introduction of more affordable electric models and the expansion of charging infrastructure, which continues to boost demand for EVs." (Euronews via Good News)
Global solar figures ‘defy gravity’: "Charting solar’s meteoric rise, the research showed that global solar installations surged by 64% in the first half of the year, compared to the same period in 2024. The growth was led by China, but India also deployed near-record amounts of solar, while Africa saw the technology begin to “take-off”. (Positive News)

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