A first prototype for a Tiny Service Design Bible

In this article I'll share how I created a prototype of a searchable Bible of Service Design with Super.so + Notion and Helpscout.

Funny context

I a friend of mine said one day that it feels that with all the content I'm creating around Service Design I'm trying to create the Bible of Service Design. I kind of like this idea for a few reasons:
  1. Like a Bible, it would make sense to bring together a lot of different content pieces in one unique place for all the people interested in the field
  2. There are many versions of the Bible, so here also the idea wouldn't be to say: that's the exact way of seeing things, but it's one version
  3. Today the Bible has awesome tools that make it easy to do research in it and find content in it. That's something inspiring.

The idea

In the last days I made a few more steps towards these idea of:
Creating one place where all the service design knowledge pieces I have (historic events, principles, Q&A, definitions, tools, processes, etc.) can be easily searched in one place.

The problem

The problem is that the tool I'm using for now to run my website (Podia) doesn't offer a site wide search. And to add such a feature I would have to:
  1. Make it happen with an external service (that's extra money)
  2. And get to the most expensive tier of Podia that would allow me to connect such external services.
So paying around 1500-2000$ more per year to make my content searchable hurts a bit too much.

The prototypes: helpscout and notion+super.so

Since I've been playing with the idea of having a new version of my website, I've realized that the format of website that makes the most sense for me for the future is to create something like a knowledge base.

So I've googled and compared all types of knowledge bases. In short here is what I found:
  • Most solutions are way too expensive for my wallet
  • Many of these solutions look very crappy
  • There are two that seemed to fit my criteria of good design + "affordable pricing": Helpscout Docs and Super.so + Notion

So I've setup a free trial for both of these two tools and built a prototype in each. Here is what I learned:

Help Scout Prototype

How the shitty prototypes looks
The overview 
(- means bad stuff, + means good stuff)
  • - Fixed page structure
  • + Beacon feature
  • + Feedback button and analytics
  • + Categorie navigation
  • - Basic search
  • + Focus on search on home
  • 289$ for the first year or 20$ per month + 69$ on time template

Super.so + Notion

How the shitty prototype looks

The overview
(- means bad stuff, + means good stuff)
  • + Freedom in page structure
  • - No beacon but could be done with free tool
  • - No feedback button (manual)
  • - Needs time to setup navigation
  • + Advanced search
  • - Can’t make search bigger on home
  • 264$ for the first year or 22$ per month

What I learned

Here a few of things I learned while doing these prototypes:
  1. In Notion use one database for all knowledge pieces: Historic events, Q&A, Principles, definitions, etc can all be in one database so that I can quickly show other knowledge pieces that have a specific tag but that come from a different format.
  2. Get the "Pro site" plan on super.so: The advanced search feature for Super.so is in the most expensive tier
  3. Use Emoji coding of pages: having in the title of each piece of knowledge an emoji makes it possible to quickly differentiate during a search the types of knowledge pieces (definitions, principles, Q&A, etc.)
  4. Not many templates for Helpscout: There only very few HelpScout templates still with a bit of custom css you can create something lovely. 

What's the winning tool so far?

Whenever I have time or motivation to build my searchable "Tiny Service Design Bible" notion with super.so is a viable solution. Because Super.so has
  • the best flexibility that makes it possible to create something truely custom
  • a good search that shows not only titles of pages but content
  • a good free tier that lets me continue to prototype without spending money

How much time would it take?

Now that I know it's technically possible to do what I have in mind and that it's also possible for my wallet, the question is: how much time would I need to add the 1000+ content pieces I already have in such a system? Here is an approximation:
  1. Base setup in 1 day: I think in one day of work I can create the base layout and system in notion + super
  2. Content migration 2 days: If I take 1 minute in average per content piece, that would then take me about 16,6.. hours to migrate the content, so basically two full days of work
  3. Bonus time 1 day: another day to do some cleaning and fixing mistakes

So basically in about 4 days of work I could have a first usable version with all my existing content in one searchable place. 

The future

So these prototypes proved that:
  1. super.so + notion could be a good technical solution (both in terms of features and price)
  2. it would take me about one week of deep focus to create a first version of this idea

Now I let this idea on the side and see how my thoughts mature about this idea of building a tiny service design bible.

Written on Saturday 11th of February 2023, by Daniele Catalanotto