This is a copy of the Service Design Newsletter I sent on January 14th 2023. You can join the Service Design newsletter here to get future updates directly in your inbox.

Hey lovely human 👋

This week I want to share with you why a huge quantity of Service Design Principles is less stressful than five definitive rules 👇

Also, in the last weeks, after the end-of-year holidays and the book launch, I’ve been able to create more Service Design content:

• I wrote 5 new Service Design Principles drafts,

• I published 22 new Service Design Questions and Answers,

• and I published 1 backstage blog article.

All the details are below 👇 for when you are less busy.

Have a good start in 2023 and greetings from Switzerland,
Daniele 🧔🏻‍♂️

If you haven’t yet, check out my new book.

Why a huge quantity of Service Design Principles is less stressful than five definitive rules.

Short answer, because you know best what’s useful to you.

I have to admit that I sometimes get a little bit sad about the strict and nearly religious way of writing about how to solve problems and better serve the humans around us (which some of us, like me, call Service Design).

You can find online things like the “5 definitive rules to follow for great customer experience”.

And if you don’t follow them exactly, you suck! This approach to Service Design creates a shitload of stress. And also oversimplifies things with a kind of too-religious way of seeing things. (I’m the son of a pastor and the husband of another pastor, so I think I have a good idea of when religion can get a little bit too prescriptive and out of hand.)

I believe that when you give many little principles, ideas and tips to people, suddenly, there is a big change of mindset.

People say to themselves, “Of course, I won’t do everything, but I will just pick and choose what really matters for my situation”.

Because I believe people are smart and know best what’s useful for them.

So when we share many principles, ideas and tips instead of fixed and rigid rules, take us out of the idea that there is only one right way to do things. I believe it helps us to go from a sense of urgency and panic that we won’t be able to do everything correctly to a mindset of experimentation where we say to ourselves:

“Hey, let me try this tip. Does it work? No. Okay, no problem. I’m gonna try another service design principle. Oh, this idea worked really well! How can I make it even better?”

I believe that when we see the abundance of solutions and ideas, it creates curiosity and motivation just to try things out.

This tiny article is inspired by one of the “Seven Powers of Principles” that I mentioned during my Service Design Webinar of December 2022.

Changelog

1. Service Design Principles

“A Service Design Principle is an idea, a tip, an advice or a principle to improve the human experience.” These are the latest principles I’ve been working on.

New principles

1. Let others brag about you

2. Give me an alternative when you block me

3. The customer is king. But you can choose your king

4. Prepare a text I can copy to convince others

5. Think about the death of your service

2. Service Design Questions

I’m slowly building a library of answers to the most common questions about Service Design. Here are the new ones:

New question category: hiring service designers

I’ve created a new category in the Q&A that helps you to learn what it takes to hire fitting service design talents for your organization and your goals.

1. What are common mistakes company make when hiring service designers?

2. What are good questions to ask to a service designer to evaluate his skills during a job interview?

3. Where can I find great service design talents?

New questions category: Service Design and other fields

I’ve created a new category in the Q&A that helps you to understand how Service Design compares to other fields like UX, Customer Experience, Product Design, etc.? And how it does from them?

1. How does service design differ from product design?

New questions category: Service Design Books

I have created a new category in the Q&A to help you find books and authors who are specialized in Service Design.

1. What are beginner books on service design?

2. What are books on the service design tools and methods?

3. What are the most recommended books on service design?

4. Who are book authors on service design?

New service blueprint questions

The service blueprint is maybe one of the most unique service design that is out there, so I took some extra time to add additional questions on this topic.

1. What’s a good structure for a Service Blueprint?

2. What are examples of Service Blueprints?

3. Can a service blueprint be used in conjunction with other design tools and techniques?

4. What’s the difference between a service blueprint and a customer journey map?

5. What are the steps for creating a service blueprint?

6. How can I use a service blueprint as a diagnostic tool?

7. How can I use a service blueprint as a prototyping tool?

8. How can I use a digital whiteboard to make a smarter service blueprint?

Other new service design questions

1. How to structure the synthesis or insights of user testings?

2. What does a service designer do?

3. What is a good site for service designers to share their work?

4. What is the best platform or tool to build a service design portfolio on?

3. Backstage blog articles

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:

1. How much it costs me to create a book?