The question is NOT “Can this service be built?

Daniele Catalanotto
Service Design Magazine

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Hey there 👋

Here’s a little inspiration for those who are building new services:

“The question is not “Can this product be built?” In the modern economy, almost any product that can be imagined can be built. The more pertinent questions are “Should this product be built?” and “Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?” — A quote from the book “The Lean Startup”

What’s your plan for this Saturday?
Join the Service Design Webinar 🍺

The next Service Design webinar will be on Saturday 24th of September. As always, it’s free 🍾

What’s the new Service Design stuff I created in the last weeks?
A lot 🤯

You’ll find all the details about these resources below and a little story about the Scottish police below 👇

Have a lovely end of the week and greetings from Switzerland,
Daniele 🧔🏻‍♂️

When the Scottish police remind me of an old doodle.

This made me blush 🤗 : I saw that the smart Jacque Smith used a tiny drawing I made within her Service Design course for something the Police Scotland.

For those who want to see the illustration, you can find it here in a bigger version.
It’s part of the freely available course “What is Service Design” 🤓

Bravo and thank you Jacque for doing such great work in bringing Service Design to such a critical part of the public sector.

Service Design Principles

“A Service Design Principle is an idea, a tip, an advice or a principle to improve the human experience.” These are the latest principles I’ve been working on.

  1. New: Ask me if I want to continue with you
  2. New: Open the customer’s cage
  3. New: If you ask me to fill a survey, let me see the results
  4. New: Add context to the address
  5. New: Celebrate the end of my trial period
  6. New: Let me add a personal note in any survey
  7. New: Give me the week day when you give me a date
  8. New: Wish me something lovely in an unexpected place
  9. New: Prepare me for the challenge
  10. New: Tell me why I have to use this form
  11. New: Let me know what to say in an emergency
  12. New: Make me write something for my future self

New co-created Service Design Principles

These are new stories and case studies shared by community members that set the start of new co-creation sessions that could inspire new Service Design Principles.

  1. Supporting professionals refer vulnerable people
  2. Reimagine how landlords & tenants experience renting process end to end

Service Design Questions and Answers

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

Service Design Basics Questions

  1. Updated: Is there a common acronym for Service Design?

Service Design Career Questions

  1. New: How can you work in a service design job if you don’t have a service design degree?
  2. New: What are your tips on verbal communication Service Design job interviews?
  3. New: How do you best communicate what’s the role and what isn’t the role of the Service Designer?
  4. New: How can you show that different backgrounds contribute to the service design work in valid ways?

Service Design Portfolio question

  1. New: How can I show complex Service Design work in an attractive without downplaying the efforts that went into it?

Service Design Philosophy Questions

  1. New: Should we really make all experiences less shitty?

Service Design Principles Questions

  1. New: What’s a Service Design Principle?
  2. New: How does a Service Design Principle Library look like?
  3. New: What are the different types of Service Design Libraries?
  4. New: Why should I create my own principles library?
  5. New: What’s the minimal version of a Service Design Library?
  6. New: What are the different profiles of people creating a Service Design Library?
  7. New: What are recommended books to start your Service Design Library?
  8. New: How many Principles can you extract from one story?

Service Blueprint Questions

  1. New: How can I improve the end of a Service?

Service Design and workshop Questions

  1. What’s the right way to facilitate a workshop or meeting?

Service Design and research questions

  1. How to prioritize user research?

Service Design Processes

I’m slowly collecting a library of Service Design Processes, here a few interesting news on this.

  1. New: Manyone’s Service Design Process
  2. New recommended reading: What is Service Design and It’s Process written by Janna DeVylder of the Meld Studios team.

Behind-the-scenes blog

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. Book writing update
  2. What tools do I use to publish my webinars?
  3. How much time does it take to publish a webinar?
  4. Tiny apps that help to write a book
  5. How writing a newsletter helps me fight my imposter syndrome

Recommended resources

An overview of the resources and tools that were mentioned during the last webinar.

  1. Free guide: Service Design Principles Quickstart Guide
  2. Free mini-course and test: Principle creator personality types
  3. Notion template: Principles Note Taker
  4. Book: Building a Second Brain
  5. Book: How to take smart notes

The curious question

You made it to the end of this long changelog email. Wow! Well done, buddy 👏 I have a question for you:

What’s the one struggle or pain that all these resources help you fix?

Hit reply, and let’s chat ❤️

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A swiss service designer who thinks that the best hobby in the world is to help others — catalanotto.ch