How I create and maintain my Service Design Questions and Answers Library
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:
- The basics of Service Design
- Value and impact of Service Design?
- Examples of good Service Design
- Learning Service Design
- Service Design tools, apps and methods
- Service Blueprints and Journey Maps
- Service Design as a career
- Service Design portfolio
- Service Design workshops and facilitation
- Service Design and Research
- Service Design Principles
- Service Design projects
- Service Design Philosophy and Mindset
- World wide Service Design
Where do the questions and answers come from?
The answers to these questions come from different sources:
- 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
- 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
- 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:
- Things: to capture quick ideas
- Canva: to create the slides
- Restream.io: to run the webinar where I'll share the questions and answers
- Final Cut: to cut the webinar into clips of individual questions
- Grammarly: to quickly fix a few grammar mistakes in the written text
- 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.
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.
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?"
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.