This is a copy of the Service Design Newsletter I sent on June 3d 2023. You can join the Service Design newsletter here to get future updates directly in your inbox.

Hey lovely human 👋

I'm in the mountains this week, so you'll get a newsletter with just one thought below👇 as I didn't produce any new Service Design content this week.

Greetings from Morgins in the Swiss Alps,
Daniele 🧔🏻‍♂️

Bits of advice and Service Design Principles

It's always fascinating when you find out that there are more people than you think that do the same thing than you.

You might know that I'm a big fan of what I call Service Design Principles. A Service Design Principle is an idea, a tip, advice or a principle to improve the human experience in a simple way. And you might know that I have a personal goal to publish 500 of them until my kid goes to school. I've already published 300, this year I'll put 100 more, and next year 100 more. And once my kid goes to school, we will see what happens.

But that's just the context.

I was listening to the podcast The Knowledge Project hosted by Shane Parris, and it was an episode with Kevin Kelly.

What struck me is how Kevin pursues a similar idea to "Service Design Principles. He calls them "bits of advice". On his website, he explains it like that:

"I’ve been jotting down bits of advice I wished I had known earlier in my life, and then sharing them with my children. Each one is like a tweet — a wisdom tweet. This year I have put 450 of them into a pocket-sized book, called Excellent Advice for Living."

If you are interested in this idea of building your own library of Service Design Principles, I highly recommend you check out that podcast episode. I've put below a few extracts of the parts that I found especially inspiring for those like us who are creating such libraries of advice.

Selected extracts from Kevin Kelly's interview with Shane Parris

I was writing these bits of advice for myself. I found that I could make a habit out of something by reducing the idea of it to a little capsule and give it a handle so I could repeat it to myself. I could remind myself of it. And so I wanted some way to take a lot of big weighty, large advice and reduce it into a proverb that I could repeat.

So that's sort of the origins. I was kind of doing that in my head. I would hear something, and I would repeat it to myself to remind myself of it.
And so these things have the origin in the sense of, like, did they work for me? Do they work for me first? And then I can pass it on.

I'm thinking of a way to encapsulate a lot of information and advice, and wisdom into a little tiny device that I can hold on to.

So I have several filters, I think through this, one is like, you know, do I really believe this?
This is something that I think really works. And then, secondly, is it practical? Does it, is it actionable? Would it change how I do my day?
And thirdly, I'm trying to follow my own device, uplift and be positive as much as possible.

And so, trying to give general advice is definitely not about precision.
It's about moving in the right direction.