In this article, I'll share with you the process and tools I use to create individual Questions and Answers about Service Design.

A bit of context first

As of today I've captured more than 110 common questions that people ask or have about Service Design. I try to share at least one quick thought for each question that might help people go further. The questions cover a wide range of topics like:

1. The basics of Service Design

2. Value and impact of Service Design?

3. Examples of good Service Design

4. Learning Service Design

5. Service Design tools, apps and methods

6. Service Blueprints and Journey Maps

7. Service Design as a career

8. Service Design portfolio

9. Service Design workshops and facilitation

10. Service Design and Research

11. Service Design Principles

12. Service Design projects

13. Service Design Philosophy and Mindset

14. World wide Service Design

Where do the questions and answers come from?

The answers to these questions come from different sources:

1. Coaching: I've answered this question in a coaching session with a student and try to write down a summary so that it helps others too

2. Quora: People ask a question on Quora, and I share there my answer and make a copy in the Q&A database for further reference

3. Webinar: The question is part of one of my Service Design webinars, and I turn it into a clip that will be part of the Q&A library.

In the following lines, I'll give an overview of that last type of question: questions and answers from my Service Design webinars.

Overview of the tools I use for the questions and answers:

As of today, these are the tools I've used to help create those Q&A:

1. Things: to capture quick ideas

2. Canva: to create the slides

3. Restream.io: to run the webinar where I'll share the questions and answers

4. Final Cut: to cut the webinar into clips of individual questions

5. Grammarly: to quickly fix a few grammar mistakes in the written text

6. Podia: to host the Q&A library and send the newsletter

Stage 1: Title and rough notes

Often I first write the title of the question and a few rough notes in Things, my to-do list app.

Stage 2: Slides

Weeks or months later, when I prepare a new webinar, I select some of the questions and add them to the presentation slides with Canva. For each question, I have a title slide with the question and then a few explanations slides that usually contain a piece of key advice with a little bit of additional context below.
With just these slides, I can "improvise" live during the webinar based on these notes.

Stage 3: Clips and notes

After the webinar is done, I cut the 1-hour recording of the webinar into small clips. Each clip is one specific Service Design question. I then export all clips and add them to the Q&A library that is built with Podia.
Since the latest webinar of December 2022, I'm trying to add a summary made of bullet points below each video, which is a copy of the slide structure. By doing so, people can have the main ideas even without looking at the video.
Each clip is part of a category in the Q&A Library, and I make sure to link to the rest of the category so that people can find more content like this one that might interest them.
When the clip is live, I mention it in the changelog part of my newsletter, where I keep track of all the new service design content I create.

Stage 4: Improvements

Now that the question is live, each time I have a new thought or reference that helps to answer that question, I add it directly there. This helps me to slowly build pretty rich answers without much effort as the work is spread over months.
Once I've updated a question, I make sure to mention that it has been updated in my newsletter so people can check it.

A good example of Q&A that gets richer over time "How to pitch Service Design?"

Written by Daniele Catalanotto on December 13th, 2022.