In short: Recruit first. Prototype second. start by recruiting testers and scheduling multiple test moments. This gives you a positive pressure to have to show up with something to test as there are people waiting for you.

The danger

When you are a Service Design team of one one of the big dangers is too loose yourself in the synthesis and prototyping part of the work. Because you can always tweak a little thing in a prototype. But that can then lead to doing less testing sessions of the things you've built.

The hack

A little hack that I like to recommend for people doing Service Design as a team of one is to recruit first and prototype second.

In fact, you can start your project by scheduling test days throughout the project and recruiting people for these days. This creates a sort of positive pressure where you know there are people who are waiting for you on a specific day to test what you have created.

The advantages

Back in the days when I worked on an innovation project in London with the lovely folks of Good Innovation for a big NGO we had a setup where we finished each week of work with a full day of testing.

Having that rythm:

• pushed us to iterate

• pushed us to make decisions

• gave our project a sort of hearbeat

• ensured we were grounded in deep empathy

Backstage of this article

This article was illustrated using a refurbished Remarkable II tablet. The text was written on the same tablet using a folio keyboard.