As a university student, how do I dig for good context to build service design projects? Very good question. And the one that comes a lot in the coaching that I do in universities about service design, let's jump right into it. The first tip I always give to students is start with interest, are you interested in this topic? If yes, wonderful, because you're going to work on that for a long time. So it needs to be interesting to you. If not, just choose something you're interested about, genuinely interested about. It doesn't have to be a passion, but something that you think, oh, I could see myself reading about that in in 20 books.

Okay, cool. I can do that. The other thing is... Find a problem, because it's easier if you're working on a service design project to have a problem to solve. Even if it's just one problem, and at the end of the process you might solve a completely different problem, because you at the end find out that the real problem is another one.

That's totally fine. But start with a problem, because it helps to get started. And another thing is make it super tiny. Here, I want just to share a few examples how tiny a good service design project is in a university, for example. And these are projects that I have seen in the past year at the HSLU, which is the University of Lucerne, where there is a pretty good master.

For example, one example is, instead of saying, oh, I want to help all the people who are blind. That's very vague, and it's going to be hard to work on that. The other level could be, oh, I want to help blind people in Switzerland. Okay, that's already a bit narrow. Let's go deeper. I want to help people who are blind in Switzerland with their shopping problems.

Aha! Okay, now we start to have something quite interesting, but we can go further. I want to help people who are blind with their shopping problems. at Migros, which is one of the supermarkets in Switzerland. And now you have a very small scope, which is still big, but you have a scope which you can start to work with.

Another example, someone interested in sustainability, I'd say, I want to do something about sustainability. Too vague. I want to make something about sustainability for my village. Okay, that's already better. We have a context. Or I want to do I want to help my the citizens of my village.

Better sort their waste. Okay, now we have something which is very small and very actionable. The last example that I will give you is the one that I worked with back in the days when I was newly, which is, my scope was, I want to help the local homeless shelter of the Salvation Army. In more, that's super specific.

So you can be very specific about what is the problem or what is the location. And when you are so specific, then it's super easy to find something to do. And obviously you always can make the scope larger after if it's really needed. Start as small as possible and then make it larger if it's really needed.

It's much simpler to make it larger than make it smaller. Okay. And you are allowed to be lazy. Oh, yes. Because as a student in service design, your goal is to learn service design. So it's not important that you lose a lot of time recruiting people, getting people to get motivated about your project, finding a good context.

No. Be lazy. Work with what you already have. So it means find organizations where you have friends in, find organizations where you have friends who are in a, who are in a power position, because it's going to be so much easier to get them to do stuff with you than if you say, Oh, I want to work for this dream company, but I don't know anybody there.

So select something in a context that you already know, where you already have connections, because it's going to make your life easier, and then you can spend the time not in project management, but in doing your service design work.