Practical questions to better serve others - Newsletter of September 10th 2023
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:
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
Strategic Foresight and Service 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).
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 🦾
Here a quick overview of the newly imported sections in my digital brain:
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: