Service Design Webinar and Infoday

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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:

2 invitations to a Service Design events:

Webinar: Learnings from prototyping a Journey Management Study Group with Arun Joseph Martin.
Infoday: Come and visit me and Andy Polaine on site at the Infoday of the Master Service Design of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

2 Service Design Principles:

Experiment: Do a removal challenge
Pricing: Charge now for Future Costs

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.

Discover one of the best ways to start a Service Design career.

On Friday 21 and Saturday 22nd of November you can get the chance to have 1:1 conversations with Andy Polaine and myself about the Master Service Design we co-lead for the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

It's also the occasion to:

See some of the work in progress prototypes of the learners
Ask your questions to the learners themselves about their experience
See the huge amount of workshop spaces, materials and spaces that you get access to by joining such a masters

See you live!

See the full program

Learnings from prototyping a Journey Management Study Group

How do you continue to learn Service Design skills when you have decades of experience, or are just starting?

One of the best ways is for sure Study Groups around a key topic.

But how do you create such a group? How do you keep the group dynamic healthy, strong and inspiring?

How do you get people to join that group, so that learning isn't anymore a thing you do alone with a book, an online course, or a podcast.

These are all questions that you get to ask directly to Arun Joseph Martin who created a Journey Management Study group.

In the next webinar of the Swiss Service Design Network he'll share his learnings and will answer your questions.

A huge thank you to Arun Joseph Martin for sharing all his learnings with the wider community 💚

Save your free 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 putting objects in a trash bin

Do a removal challenge

Alright, let's talk about comfort. Five years ago, I went from making 120k a year to about a third or even a fourth of that. Am I less happy? Hell no. Do I still have a beautiful life? Absolutely. This shift happened because of one set of conversations I had over and over again.

When my son was about to be born, like any new dad, I was freaking out. So, I asked dads with older kids what they wished they had done differently. Every single one told me the same thing: I wish I had been more present during the first four years. Those early years when kids don’t have school or friends yet and just want to be with you are really precious. Later on, kids get busy with their own lives.

Based on that advice, I decided to cut down on work hours to be more present for my little one. Obviously, this meant cutting my salary drastically. This forced me to rethink everyday comforts. Guess what? Today, I still live comfortably.

This experience taught me that things we think are absolutely necessary can become forgettable once we live without them for long enough (1).

Plus, there are often great alternatives to the comforts we’re used to. We can definitely live with less, even if it feels uncomfortable at first. The human mind is amazing at adapting to new normals—good or bad.

Action question

What elements of your work, life or service, could try to remove for just a few weeks to see if you could live without it?

Footnotes

(1) That’s also why at the moment I’m doing a bit of challenge where I try to reduce drastically my smartphone usage.

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.

Share feedback

Another principle I shared this week:

An illustration of plane tickets and a smartphone showing a buying process for them

Charge now for Future Costs

In short: Include in the price of your service not just the business cost, but all other future costs, like social and environnemental costs.

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.

Global polio cases down 99% since 1990s: "The number of polio cases globally has plummeted by more than 99% in just 35 years, new data from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests." (Positive News)
41% reduction in maternal mortality rate: According to an international study, (...) there had been a 41% reduction in the maternal mortality rate between between 2000 and 2023. (Positive News)
Australians promised free solar electricity: "Australia is producing so much solar power that it’s going to start giving it away to its citizens during the day, the government announced this week." (Positive News)

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