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🤔 ▶️ How can you make a Service Design Principles Library that is useful for others too?
🤔 ▶️ How can you make a Service Design Principles Library that is useful for others too?
Daniele Catalanotto avatar
Written by Daniele Catalanotto
Updated over a year ago

Summary of the video

  • Finish each principle with a question: The answer to that question is practical and will change how people work.

  • Let people subscribe to a newsletter: They don't have to remember to visit your library but get notified when something new gets in it.

  • Link to external sources and inspirations: Help people go beyond what you wrote and find the original sources or additional resources.

  • Let people comment: To share additional examples, tips and resources.

Video transcript

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

How can you make a service design principles library that is useful not only for yourself, for others too? The first thing I would say is and it's something that I learned and used from my last book, Service Design Principles 201, 202, 203, which is to end each principle with a question. I think that's really helpful because when you end with a question for a person that is being asked, it helps this person think, oh, Okay, now I have to answer this, and the answer to the question should be something that helps the person get into practice.

That's a very valuable thing so that it's not just, oh, this is a long reading time that I had, but then asking the question so that people start thinking how does this apply to me. Then another thing that you can do to help out people if you're building a service I believe, or for yourself, maybe you could say, hey, Here is the little newsletter where people can subscribe to receive your latest principles.

Maybe it's once a month. Maybe it's just whenever you have one, a new one. But it's coming. But this would be lovely because, so people get notified when something new is written on your side. I do not have to come back to your website or to your LinkedIn profile, whatever, to find out if you thought.

And I think that's something which is quite beautiful and that people seem to really like. Another thing that you can do to help out people is to link to external sources and inspirations. This helps people to go beyond what you wrote and find the original sources or additional resources. For example, if you mention a story, it's nice to have a link to that original story so that people can make it.

I think it's important to have an opinion for themselves and see, oh, do I agree with the interpretation that Indiana Jones is about this, or not? Or maybe there's stuff that you say, oh, there's a definition about a term that might be interesting that then links to a Wikipedia page where people can go and be curious.

So I think here, the idea is really to say, it's not only about your content, but also guiding people towards. More content from external sources that will help people get more curious and learn. A lovely thing that I've been experimenting in the past that's also quite valuable, not only for other people, but also for me, is the ability to comment.

Given, if you publish your principles, Python has a place where people can leave their comments. Because then what will happen, people will share feedback with you to improve your principles and your ideas, but also they will share additional examples, like additional tips that might be very useful for you, but also for all the other people.

How can you create your writing routine? One thing that I would say is that routines definitely help, because if you have a writing routine or habit. It doesn't take as much effort to get into the right team, it's just something you do, like brushing your teeth, you don't think about it, you just know, I've just eaten, I'm going to brush my teeth.

So really think about how you can build a good team, because it's going to make your life much easier, and it's going to make this process of building your Ansible library much more easy. And one simple trick is to use like a... Routine Sandwiches, we call it like that, which is build on routines that you already have.

For example, you go to the toilet. Maybe each time you are on the toilet is a perfect time to take a minute and instead of watching Instagram or TikTok, look at your phone tool and look at the past events that you have. What were the big moments that I had? What can I learn from there? That's a routine language.

You use something that you're working to, you go into the target, and you attach to it working your principles. The other thing is, try several things. For example, try different routines, or try writing your principles yourself on your computer, maybe try to dictate them to yourself, or maybe try podcast with a friend to have a conversation about those together.

And then see what sticks. See what's more natural to you. For example, for myself, I've tested nearly all of these options and I found out that one of the easiest ways for me, personally, is still writing. That's the way that I feel is the most effective for me to produce a password design principle library.

But that's very personal and I would really suggest that you try out different things to see what sticks. And one question that What's quite important is to ask yourself when, what's the moment when I'm going to write? And there are some specific moments that you can use, is it when I'm going to the train station and I'm writing as I'm going to the train station and the bus?

Is it whenever I come back to work? I think defining these moments can really help you to build your routine that will then make your life easier once you want to start this. Habit of building your principal team or principles library. And if you're interested in this idea of, Oh, I want to make it a routine, I will highly recommend that you read this book, Atomic Habits by James Thier, which gives you a lot of tips and a process that you can use to build your own routine.

It's not specific to writing or building a service library, but it's for any routine, and I think this is something

A community question

This question was part of the fifth Service Design webinar: The Power of Principles. You can rewatch the full webinar for free with all the show notes and slides.

✨ Made with assistance of AI.

The transcript of the video was made using Descript.

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