This is a copy of the Service Design Newsletter I sent on September 10th 2023. You can join the Service Design newsletter here to get future updates directly in your inbox.

Hi lovely human 👋

This week, I've worked on this new Service Design content that I'd love to share with you:

• A list of practical questions from my next book 📘 to better serve people

• An invitation to a webinar about theatre and Service Design 🎭

• 5 new answers to Service Design Questions (and 6 questions imported from previous webinars).

• 2 backstage blog articles about changes I've made to my new Service Design brain 🧠

Greetings from Switzlerland,

Daniele 🧔🏻‍♂️
p.s. As always, you'll find all below for when you have the time to read this newsletter.

Practical questions to better serve others

Sometimes, a good question is much stronger than a good piece of advice. So this week, I'll stay out of the "advice giving" mode but instead will share a few questions that might lead to some interesting reflections:

Lovely and human services

• What’s something simple you could do this week to understand better the people you serve and interact with (remember your colleagues matter too)?

• What’s the service you love the most? What’s one thing from that service you could steal to make yours friendlier?

• How many people could you reasonably surprise this week with a lovely gesture? Who are they? What would the surprise be?

• What could you change in how you present your prices to make people realise that you truly care?

Frustration

• What’s an area in your work or service where you could make the information less overwhelming?

• What’s a tiny frustration you notice at work or in your service that you could turn around to create a smile for others?

Change

• What’s something in your service that people need to be reassured about more strongly before they join?

• What’s the next change that you’re planning for employees or customers? What can you prepare to make that change smoother?

• What’s a key piece of information that co-workers or customers tend to forget? How could you help them remember it more easily?

• What’s one part of your service that people tend to break? What could you do to avoid this?

Workplace

• What’s the element that newcomers in your organisation struggle the most with when they join? How can you make that part of work calmer?

• What task do people feel is absurd, unnecessary or boring to hell at work? Do you need to remove it, automate it, or change its perception?

These questions are part of the chapter summaries of my next book, "Service Design Principles 301-400", which comes out in just a few months.

I'll be doing an international pre-release book tour with other Service Design nerds who each comment one book chapter. So make sure to join the waitlist to get these videos.

New Service Design Questions

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

1. Is a survey a good start for a research project?

2. How can I combine surveys and interviews?

3. How can you make your research age well

4. What's the difference between playful experiences and gamified experiences?

5. What are examples of advanced Service Design tools?

Updated questions

• What are examples of Service Blueprints? (added a link to three Service Blueprints from Airbnb, Spotify and Starbucks)

Questions imported from SDN webinars

Over the past months, I’ve been hosting the Swiss Service Design Network webinars. I’ve imported parts of these conversations into the Q&A database:

Spatial Design and Service Design

• How can I better understand how people use a specific space?

• How does colour impact the humans in space?

• Can you design a too good workplace?

Strategic Foresight and Service Design

• What is Strategic Foresight?

• How should service designers think about the future?

• How can service designers help decolonise design?

This Wednesday: Theater x Service Design Webinar

Soon I'll be hosting a webinar with the lovely Emmanuel Fragnière on how he uses Theater in his Service Design practice. The event is free (and yes it will be recorded).

Save your seat now

An update about the Service Design brain

This weekend, I've imported 80 questions and answers to my new Service Design Brain. This means you can now search through a total of 350 knowledge pieces about Service Design in this tool or even ask an AI to answer your question based on that content 🦾

Play with my brain

Here a quick overview of the newly imported sections in my digital brain:

1. Research in Service Design

2. Career in Service Design

3. Hiring service designers

4. Coaching and Service Design

5. Portfolio for Service Design

6. Workshops and facilitation with Service Design

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 I upgrade my video content with AI when I import it in my digital brain

2. Why I've built a landing page for my service design digital brain?