I love:

I hate:

Workshops are a super exciting part of the service designer work. Usually when people leave the workshop, they are full of energy and tell you that they are amazed by how much they were able to achieve in such a short amount of time.

And that's a really great motivation boost.

The moments of research with people are also one of the most lovely part of the service designer job. For example, spending time in an interview with a worldwide expert is something deeply inspiring.

Or spending time with a user who doesn't understand how the service works and who gives you all the tips to improve the service you're working on is just brilliant.

Finally, one of the parts where I really feel the magic is happening is the moment where you start doing all the synthesis of the research that you did the prototyping and you put it all together into a package where you feel:

"Now, all the pieces really fit together"

And when you are able to find unexpected insights, that feels even better!

But obviously, not all of the service designer work is fun or even interesting.

One of the parts that I really don't like one of the parts that I really don't like is when I have to work with quantitative data and have to reformat it so that I can work with it.

That's tedious, boring work. But fortunately, these days, tools like Notion.a help me to get there faster.

But still, I haven't found a magical solution that formats perfectly and every time all my quantitative data in just seconds. If you know one, let me know!

The scheduling part of workshops or sprints is something that can be very long and also pretty demotivating.

But fortunately, when you have to do that with people who are outside of your organisation, there are services that help you to do that in a very efficient way.

For example, the people from TestingTime will help you to get workshop participants or user testing participants based on the requirements you send them. And then they handle all the recruitment and boring little logistical things that need to happen.

This help is definitely worth the price! Sometimes I dream of having such a service internally.

But for now, internal recruitment and scheduling is still something that I don't enjoy as much as the other parts of my job.

When you work inside, when you work in-house as a service designer it has a lot of advantages: you know much more about the organization, and you are able to build trust with people that will then lead to discovering much deeper insights.

But on the other side, you, you sometimes have to deal with internal politics.

And I must admit, that this is a part where I'm not as good as I'd like to be.

I know that in theory, a bit of lobbying, change management and good storytelling can help me with these situations.

But as of today, I still have to grow in this part of my practice.

Fortunately there is a lot of exciting stuff to do as a service designer. And there is stuff where you will have challenges that will give you opportunities to continue to grow in your own practice.