What are the advantages of sketching before doing big computer tasks?

In short:

• It helps to see each step (which makes the plan clearer),

• it creates focus,

• it helps explore alternatives

• and it gives you a visual documentation you can share later with a client or in a case study.

And if you don't like to draw, writing by hand can lead to the same results.

What are some of the dark sides of Service Design?

In short:

• Human centered not planet centered: in a period where we live in a climate crisis, should we really first care about the wishes of the people we serve?

• Nature as an invisible backstage: The tools of Service Design aren't natively thinking about nature (like the Service Blueprint).

• Machines over humans: by optimizing for self-service, we create a world where we spend more time interacting with machines than humans.

• Everything smooth means no effort: by trying to remove all the frictions from experiences we create a "wall-E" like world, where the biggest effort we ask of people is to swipe.

• Platforms over personal relationships: platforms that help businesses and individuals meet get too much power and cut the relationships.

• Subscription everything: When everything becomes a service things that didn't need to be a subscription suddenly are.

How to not lose the time we save from better tools and processes?

In short: You have a choice to make when implementing a new process or tool that will save you time: do more, go deeper, relax, explore something else.

Our default is often to do more, but there is more value in the other opportunities.

To avoid to be trapped in the default we have to "budget" for what we'll save and assign that budget in advance before we even put in the new time saving tool or process.

Where can I find inspiring business model ideas?

In short: the Business Model Navigator website has a library of 55 different Business Model patterns with for each different case studies for each pattern.

What is a good metaphor to explain how to work with opposing feedback?

In short: Imagine a person with four ropes, one on each leg and arm attached each to one horse. Every horse is pushing in another direction. What can you do?

1. Get killed by being pulled in all directions

2. Cut three ropes and go in one direction and piss everyone else

3. Cut all four ropes and build a new one that makes everyone go in one direction.