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Doing a Service Design project can be at some moments overwhelming, blocking, boring and many other feelings that end in “ing”. Here we have prepared for Service Design practitioners and learners a little kit which offers for each of these feelings a little suggestion, prompt, tip or question to come out of the emergency.
Boring: I feel bored by my Service Design project
Take a break. Maybe you’re just too much in it. Take some distance, do something else. Do something totally unrelated. You’ll come back to it with fresh eyes.
100 Shitty Ideas. Try generating 100 shitty ideas for other projects or topics. Maybe one of those seems more exciting?
Bored or overwhelmed? Check in with yourself and try to discern whether you’re actually bored or whether you’re actually feeling overwhelmed by all the things you have to do. If it’s the former, try 100 shitty ideas or go and read or watch something interesting to spark your imagination. If it’s the latter, pick a thing and make it. See below in blocked and overwhelmed for more on these.
Blocking: I feel blocked in my Service Design project
Option A: Bring in friends or coaches. You are not alone in this, you can always ask a colleague, a friend or a coach for a half hour of their time. Share to them how you feel, what blocks you, what are the contradictions that you are blocked in. And then ask your friend, coach or colleague to give you back in a structured way what they heard from you. Hearing back what you said usually clarifies things already a lot.
Option B: What would you recommend to a friend. Ask yourself, if my friend Bob would have a similar issue and would tell me about it, what would I, as a loving friend, recommend that he does. We’re often full of wisdom for others, but have a hard time to be it for ourselves.
Get out of your mind and make something tangible. Pick some aspect of your project or theme and make it tangible. That might be an initial idea that you just do a sketch or storyboard of. Maybe you build a little prototype that’s a simple digital or cardboard thing. It could be a diagram trying to map out the problem space. Anything to get things out of your head (and, ideally, off of the computer) and into the world. You can then discuss that artefact with others.
Overwhelming: I feel overwhelmed by my Service Design project
Take a break. Putting more work in a situation that feels already overwhelming will make you feel even more overwhelmed. Define a number of days for which you are not allowed to work on your project, read about it, talk about it.
Breaks give you a critical distance that we lack when we feel overwhelmed.
Constrain with a frame. Usually the overwhelm comes from either being too high level (e.g.trying solve late stage capitalism) or from too much information. The latter is usually analysis paralysis when it comes to making sense of your research or your ideas. Imposing a structure, any structure, can help.
For example, you might decide to cluster your primary and secondary research in a simple “top 3-5 insights, needs and opportunities” structure per area or interview. Or you might look at tensions and conflict and cluster according to those. Or use a journey timeline to map out key steps and emotions. Or Indi Young’s thinking styles or mental model towers.
The point here, when you are stuck, is not to spend ages trying to find the perfect structure. The point is to impose a structure that you then bump up against as you start applying it. When that happens, you start to understand your data more and what shape or structure it “wants” to take, because your imposed structure isn’t quite working. So you might decide “needs and opportunities” doesn’t make sense, this is much more about jobs to be done, etc. Once you get there, you’ll start to progress again.
Hating: I hate my Service Design project
Use the hate. Don’t solve the problem right away but instead use the energy that this hate gives you to do something bold. Design a provocation that shows why you hate the situation.
Three thought experiments: Delete, invert, be evil.
Delete: Sometimes it can help unlock your creativity if you remove your favourite part of the project or concept. for example, what happens if you remove the central stakeholder or customer?
Invert: Sometimes it can help to invert the idea. For example, instead of a service that helps guide people in a city tour, a service that helps them get lost.
Be evil: Or think of an evil version of your service. How might you cause the most harm? How might you be most unethical? How might your healthcare service murder people? Then, invert that and what do you have?
