Why should I create my own principal library? You might know that I wrote two books already. I'm writing the third one on A list of service design principles, and I think there is a lot of value for you to do that also in some kind of way. So what would I suggest to you to build your own service design principles library?

The first thing for me is this one. Observation, more than books and experience, more than persons, are the prime educators. This is not a smart sentence for me. It's a sentence from Amos Branson Alcott. And I think there is a lot of value in that sentence because it shows us that by observing things, we can learn a lot.

And when you build a service design principles, Library, you are, you put yourself in a position where every day you go out and you look at what happens in the world with an observer eye, you just, you aren't anymore just going through things like a normal user, you take your observer eye and think, hey, What's happening here that is so interesting?

Why do I hate this so much? Oh, why did I smile right just now to this staff member? You take a bit of a different role where you look at the service as an observer and you learn from it. So that's one first valuable thing. And through these observations, you learn a lot, obviously. The second thing is that, it's gonna be a positive daily routine to improve your service design skills.

Because when you are in this idea of, oh, I want to collect service design principles I want to write down all these tips that I found and see, then you are performing service design on every day. If we look at the reality, when you work as a service design practitioner, You're not really doing service design every day, because some days you have just admin tasks to do.

Some other days you're focused on project management, organizing stuff. You're not doing interviews, prototyping, ideation on that specific day. But when you are building every day your little service design principle library. Even on those days, you can take five minutes to go out and say, Hey, what is something interesting here that I see?

What's something interesting while I'm at the grocery store? What's interesting here In all this email communication that I had to make for this project, what did I learn for another project? It's a positive daily routine that keeps you on your service design mindset. It will help to refer to yourself.

Having a library is something that is quite lovely because then you can search in it and say, Oh, I remember I've wrote a tip about something like repetition and you can... Kind of type in your search bar and then see what are all the tips that I have about this topic. Okay, cool. I can use that in that project.

That's something extremely helpful because at that time, when you did the observation, maybe it was You learn something, but that wasn't practical yet for a project that you were on, but your future self will be in new projects where that observation that you did a few years ago now will become useful, and because you've brought it down somewhere, you will be able to use the power of what you learned back in the days.

So what are the benefits of creating your own principles library? So one first and key principle is it helps you to serve the humans around you better.

The more you collect, examples of good services, example of bad services, examples of statistics and and facts about how people behave, all of this stuff that is inspiring to you, the more you collect that, The more it will help you to serve the humans around you in a better way.

So that's the first thing. It's, I think, the most important thing. You are doing that because, in the end, it helps you to be to improve the services you're working for, improve the products you're building, improve the experiences that you're designing. That's the first and most important point. But there are obviously also more values and advantages to that.

The other one is a very practical one, which is... It helps you to kickstart projects. So if you're working in an organization where there are many projects going on, especially, for example, if you're in a consultancy, working in a consultancy, whenever you start a new project, it's hard if you have to start from zero.

But if you have your own service design principle library, then you can just say, okay, I'm starting this new project. What are principles that I think could be useful? In this particular project. And so you're not starting from zero. You're starting already with a lot of ideas, possibilities, and information.

So very useful to get it's a, being a lazy service designer, but a very effective one. And then if you're working in a team, it's also something that is something that can unite the team towards a common vision, because you can then say, Hey guys, we're starting this project.

And on this project, we have defined that we're going to use these five or 10 key principles to guide us along the way. That's one way of doing it. Or you can say, hey, as a team, we want to test out these, five principles and see if they match and work for our service. So this is how you can use it.

Also, not just to get shit done. The goal is to be quicker, serve better people, but also to create a common vision for the team that is working in the backstage. Another advantage is obviously this idea of building your own Pinterest, which helps you to not forget all the good inspirations you stumble upon over days.

Because what happens usually is people, read something very interesting in a book and say, Oh, I, I shouldn't remember that. I'm just going to highlight it. But. Nobody goes back to the book to read the highlights. And what a Service Design Principles Library helps you to do is to say, this was something that I highlighted.

I'm going to take a note, and put it somewhere in my Service Design Principles Library to remember so that when I start a project, I already have kind of the key ideas ready and I don't have to open every book in my very physical library and see what, where all the highlights that I made. So this is something that is, I think, quite useful and inspiring.

And obviously, this is something that is very dear to me as I live with this problem. It helps you to fight, at least a little bit, your imposter syndrome. The more your service design principles library grows, so the more you see that Oh, I have a lot of knowledge, especially if you count them.

That's very interesting when you say, Oh, I already have 300 or 50 elements in my library. These are principles that I can take for the next project. Then you feel like, okay, I already know something, it's, you see the number of your knowledge. And I think that is very inspiring because it helps you to feel, to see your expertise.

And that's, I think something that is very valuable for people like me who have a bit of an imposter syndrome problem. And then, for any service designer or service design practitioner or lover, I think the other thing that is very interesting is having your own service design principle library helps you to grow daily as a service designer.

Because you have this library that you want to take care of, and it then forces you, in a way, To look at the world in a different way look at the books you read in a different way look at the experiences you're going through in a different way, because you become much more an observer of what happens.

Because you think, Oh, this is inspiring. I should take a note of that to put it in my library. And so it helps you grow as a service designer because you're not just then living a life as anybody else, but you're also sometimes taking a bit of a step back and looking at things in a bit of a designer way and say, Oh, this is interesting.

It works because... They did this small thing here, and then you can copy that in the next project, maybe in a few years, and reuse it. Definitely, having your own service design principles library is a good way to better serve your customers, and users, and humans that you are involved with, citizens, stakeholders.

Whatever the people are you're working with, that's the one big thing, and then it has very practical advantages like being faster to start projects and also helping you to grow over time your skills as a service designer.