This is a copy of the Service Design Newsletter I sent on October 14th 2022. You can join the Service Design newsletter here to get future updates directly in your inbox.

Hey 👋

I have an invitation for you today:
You can become an early reviewer of my next Service Design book 📗 until Sunday.

Outside of that, you'll find below a changelog of all the new Service Design content I've produced in the last weeks. I've written 14 new Service Design questions and answers and updated 2. And I've also written 7 new Service Design Principles and updated 17.

Greetings from Switzerland,
Daniele 🧔🏻‍♂️

p.s. all the details below 👇

"This isn't for you"

It’s so hard to know if a book is worth your time and money. You think: Will I really get what the author promises?. Does this book bring anything new or different from the other books I’ve already read?

Reading the sales pitch of the author isn’t super useful as he might overpromise to get your money. And reviews don’t really help as people say “I love it” or “I hate it” without much detail about why. So you still don’t know if you should spend those 2-4 hours reading a book or save the time and money for a lovely couple's moment.

Last year I tried something to fix this problem.

Ask for honest reviews that contain both the bad and the good stuff.

I’ve asked people from all around the world to review a draft of the second book in the Service Design Principles series, and I’ve asked them: what did you like about it? What are the problems you have with it, or for who is this book not?

Now people interested can learn from Sharanya that “If you are looking for design tools, processes, techniques, this isn't the one for you.”
Or they can learn from Maaria that “It’s definitely not a book about design theory. It’s something that might make your life hell if, before reading it, you haven't been observing services with this mindset. You'll start noticing the small decisions made around you, and you might find yourself sending more detailed feedback after starting to embody the mindset.”

I couldn’t have imagined these ways of explaining what my book Service Design Principles 101-200 brings and doesn’t bring.

Even better, critics like the one from Hemul, who said, “Diverse instances from other parts of the world could offer interesting perspectives.” changed how I write today, as now more than 20+ principles of my next book are based on community inspirations that are much more diverse than just what’s in my brain.

Until this Sunday, you can become an early reviewer of a draft of the third book, “Service Design Principles 201-300”, which will launch at the end of the year.

When you become an early reviewer, you get a chance to:

• read it before anyone else for free

• help others now if they should skip this book or not

• and even shape the future of the series with your feedback

It takes you about 30 minutes to share your feedback once you’ve read the book, and there is a little form that guides you to do it.

At the end of this process, you will have helped people in the community spend their time and money more wisely on a book that really helps them or instead spending the money and time for a lovely dining experience instead.

Outside of that, I’m confident that you’ll learn a thing or two on how to make your customers say "I love you" instead of "fuck you!" when they interact with your product or service. At least, that's what the early feedback from Deirdre you see in the picture tells me. By the way thanks Deirdre for being an early reviewer ❤️

So what do you think? Ready to help?

Become an early reviewer before Sunday

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 Service Design Principles

1. Help me finish this later

2. Ask me my consent before you do something and say how it will feel

3. Don’t measure just because you can

4. Verify that’s me before doing anything else

5. Keep looking for weird things that happen in your service

6. Prepare me for the worst gradually

7. Even if it’s not a discussion you can respect my intelligence

Updated Service Design Principles

1. Wait for me to handle my shit

2. Create a purge day

3. Don't launch new things on Fridays

4. Turn things upside down to go through the crisis

5. Give me a place to put what I messed up with

6. Hide my kid if you take care of him

7. If it takes five minutes, do it now.

8. Let me keep what I’m comfortable with

9. Offer a little help during big life changes

10. Put a gun on your brain to decide

11. Tell where the fuck I should this message

12. Respect the holidays of others

13. Say you messed up before I discover it

14. Let me know why others come before me

15. Let me take holidays

16. Separate getting shit done moments from bonding moments

17. Make it less shitty to change my kids diapers

Service Design Questions and Answers

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

Service Design Basic Questions

1. New: What is Service Design?

Service Design Career Questions

1. New: Are there enough Service Design jobs out there?

Service Design Philosophy Questions

1. New: How should we call the people we serve?

Service Design Worldwide Questions

1. What organisations use Service Design in Switzerland?

Service Design research and testing Questions

1. Updated: How do you recruit users and testers?

Service Design Impact Questions

1. Updated: How to evaluate the value/purpose of a service?

Service Design Principles Library Questions

1. New: What is a Service Design Principles Library?

2. New: What are the benefits of creating your own Principles Library?

3. New: What's the mindset of someone who builds his own Service Design Principles Library?

4. New: How to build a Service Design Library Principles for a team?

5. New: How to organise your Service Design Principles Library?

6. New: What are tools to use to create your own Service Design Principles Library?

7. New: What are apps that make it faster to write Service Design Principles?

8. New: What are apps that help write clearer Service Design Principles?

Recommended resources

An overview of the resources and tools that were mentioned during my last Service Design webinar.

1. Book: Building a Second Brain

2. Article: How to Choose Your Notetaking App

3. Writing apps: Grammarly, Hemingway Editor

4. Utilities: Hazel, BetterSnapTool, Pastebot

5. Website builder: Podia, Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress

6. Note-taking tools: Apple Notes, Evernote, Obsidian 

7. Database tools: Notion, Airtable, Trello