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🤔 ▶️ Are Service Design principles metaphors or literal?
Daniele Catalanotto avatar
Written by Daniele Catalanotto
Updated over a year ago

The full question

Are the Service Design principles intended as metahpors or literal principles? For example, the urinal fly sticker trick feels very specific but has a generic moral (try the simple things first).

Summary of the video

  • Design principles can be both metaphors and literal principles.

  • They can be specific, such as using a Sticker on urinals, or more general, focusing on bringing the hidden child back into the service.

  • They evolve over time, along with the understanding of the designer.

Video transcript

This transcript was generated using Descript. So it might contain some creative mistakes.

The question is question on design principles. Are they intended as metaphors or literal principles? Example, do you, do we know a cleaning cost feels very specific but with a generic morale? Try the simple things first. And that's I intend them sometimes as both. And that's where I'm still evolving in my writing, I have to say.

And they started to be very literal. Like really just about. This is about the urinals. Use that. PathoSticker on urinals. But the more I got into them, the more I discovered that there is like a secret message behind them, where what I noticed is that usually these principles are an observation of a service or an experience and from that observation we can learn something and then it can change even more the way we do things.

So for example in if I had to write this principle today I think I would change a bit the title into Bring the little child back into the service, or I think it's there, it's more about this element of, like the hidden child, the one that most people don't talk about. Use that.

The fact that men, when they pee, they play with their dick, they play firefighter with a dick, that's a hidden truth, but it's a funny element. And and here, therefore, I will go with that element. These principles, they evolve over time. My understanding also evolves over time.

To answer it in a short way there are men, As both literal, like the example could be could be very specific, put a urinal put a sticker on the urinal, or they could be a bit broader and say, hey, how does that help you specifically in a more general way?

More tips

When it comes to Service Design principles it's always hard to find the right level of zoom or depth. Here a few tips I use at the moment:

  1. Reflect larger: Go one step above this interaction, how can this be generalized?

  2. Zoom out, just a tiny bit: don't make it too general as it will lose the actionable feeling, but make it applicable in other contexts.

  3. Ask yourself "will this helpful to me in the future": you are writing to remember a tip, an improvement.

  4. Ask a concrete question to the reader: Help people turn it into practice by asking a question where the answer is action

✨ Made with assistance of AI.

The transcript of the video was made using Descript, and the summary was made by using Notion.ai and the automated transcript with the prompt: "Make a summary with bullet points"

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