It’s pretty hard to make decisions when there are so many different criteria to consider.

So instead of trying to think about everything at the same time, service designers use tools that help them to make decisions step by step ✅.

A good way to do that is to use matrixes. For example, to decide which idea they want to prototype, service designers might use a simple matrix. This one has the horizontal axis as the amount of energy you put in ⚡️. How much energy do you need to make this idea happen? How much money, time, struggle is needed to make it happen?

On the second axis, comes the impact ✅. Do you get a lot of money, fame, pleasure out of it?

That’s your matrix. Pretty simple, right? The trick that service designers use to make the decision-making process easier is to consider these two criteria one after the other, and for one element at a time.

So, picture this. You have a lot of ideas you might need to work on. But you can select only a few. To do that, draw a big horizontal arrow and write “energy” at the end. Now write on a sticky note the first idea you have and consider this: how much energy would it take to make this idea happen? ⚡️ If it’s a lot, put the sticky note to the right. If it's not much energy or investment, then place it on the left.

Once you’ve done that for your first idea, do exactly the same for all the other ideas.

Now draw a vertical arrow starting from the left of the previous arrow you drew. Take the first sticky note on the left and ask yourself this: “How much impact does this idea bring?” 💰. If it’s a lot of impact, slide your sticky note to the top. If this idea doesn’t bring about much impact, then keep this sticky note at the bottom. Now, do exactly the same for all the other sticky notes.

Okay, at this stage, this might still look pretty scary. Let’s discover the next trick.

The two arrows you just drew from a square. Now draw a horizontal line in the middle of this square and draw another vertical line across the middle. You now have four quadrants.

The quadrant on the bottom left contains what I call the “candies” 🍭. These are ideas that don’t take much time to make happen but also don’t bring much value. They’re like candy. If you just eat one, no problem. It might even make you happy. But if you take plenty, you might end up having a problem.

The quadrant on the bottom right contains the stuff you should definitely forget 🗑. These are ideas that are extremely costly to make happen but have nearly zero impact! There is no need to even discuss these elements.

The quadrant on the top left holds the ideas you should definitely work on ✅. These do not need a lot of work to happen but they bring about a lot of impact. Don’t think much about whether you like them or not, just work on them.

The final quadrant, on the top right, is the strategic stuff you have to go through 🔎.

These are ideas that cost much to build but would also bring much impact. But you can't work on all of the elements here because it would kill your budget and resources. Here, you need to have a lengthy discussion about the most strategic element for you to try out.

Such a matrix is just one example of how service designers simplify the decision-making mechanism by breaking down the criteria in a step-by-step manner.

This article is part of my free course "What is the Service Designer mindset?" which helps you to finally understand how service designers think and what makes them such a special group of innovators.