Do it yourself to see how much resources needs

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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 Service Design Webinar

Everyday Service Design with Leili Mirzakhalili, an event organized by the Swiss Service Design Network

2 Service Design Principles drafts:

DYI: Do it yourself to see how much resources needs
Technology: Use on device tools

1 Backstage Blog articles:

Accessibility and Podia: Are accessibility widgets a bad idea?

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.

Webinar: Everyday Service Design with Leili Mirzakhalili

"I used the skills you taught us for a mental breakdown".

That's one of the feedback I recieved years ago after teaching Service Design skills to students of CREA, a business and marketing school in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland.

One morning one of the learners came to me during the break time, and told me that she used the way we structure challenges and make sense of data to make sense of the hard mental struggles she had.

This type of feedback is really one of those moments where I thought: "That's why I'm doing this!".

Years later I've recorded a few videos about this topic of using Service Design skills for everyday life.

Months after that, Leili Mirzakhalili shared to me that she had been doing something similar and that she'd be happy to share her approach with the wider Service Design community.

I'm really happy for this webinar by the Swiss Service Design Network made by Leili Mirzakhalili because:

It makes me feel less weird of "preaching" that Service Design skills can be used in everyday life as I know get to see someone else who does it.

Many others will get to see that Service Design can be used to help out friends, plan birthday parties, handle difficult mental moments, be okay parents, etc.

Thanks Leili for making this event happen. I'm excited to learn from you.

Save your remote seat

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 two people having giant LEGO block-like elements in their hands to build something together

Do it yourself to see how much resources needs

Since my parents produce their own electricity with solar panels they started to really feel and see how much electricity they use. It changed tiny things like using the washing machine only on sunny days.

The same happens for many other things that we do ourselves. Once you do backups yourself, instead of using a cloud tool, you notice how much stuff you are hoarding. As you don’t want to buy another hard disk, you just delete what you don’t need anymore (1).

Action question

Which parts of your service or work could you do yourself to get a better sense of how much resources it really uses?

Footnotes

(1) Or as I showed in another principle Use on device tools using on device AI made me really see how much AI uses as I could see it in my macbook battery and feel the heat under my fingers.

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

Another principle I shared this week:

An illustration of a robot coming out of a laptop

Use on device tools

In short: Use apps and AI tools directly on your computer and not over the cloud to know from where the energy comes and how much energy they use.

Read the full principle

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 a person holding a smartphone in a wheel chair

Are accessibility widgets a bad idea?

In this article I share why accessibility widgets suck (they basically don't work and sometimes make things worse). And I also share how I plan to make the accessibility of my Podia website better.

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.

Scottish prisons lead the way with fathers’ programme: "It is the first time the pioneering Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids programme (HDHK) (...) has been run in a prison environment. It means children who until now may have only seen their fathers in the confines of a visit room, are getting to play together in more natural environments, and even sit down for dinner as a family." (Positive News)
Huge rainforest protected: "Mexico, Guatemala and Belize plan to create a joint nature reserve covering almost six million hectares of Maya rainforest – an area bigger the size of Croatia. It would be the second-largest protected rainforest in Latin America, after the Amazon". (LA Times via Good News)
EU approves HIV prevention drug: "For the first time, the EU has approved an HIV prevention drug that only needs to be injected twice a year. The active ingredient, lenacapavir, eliminates the need for a daily PrEP pill, making it easier for people to protect themselves against infection. The drug is already available in the U.S. and is recommended by the WHO". (Euronews via Good News)

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