Welcome to Strategic Service Design
Starting a writing practice
Happy 2025! It’s been a goal of mine to write more about service design.
For a while, I lacked the confidence to put myself out there. I worried
I didn’t have enough to say, or that people wouldn’t read my work. I was
often too exhausted from working and parenting to dedicate time and
energy to writing.
Then, last year, I used my professional development budget to work with
Linn Vizard of Made Manifest
to encourage my writing practice on service design. Linn publishes a
regular newsletter called “Ask a Service Designer.” While working with
Linn, I realized I do have a point of view. And I might surprise myself
— there could be at least one person who would get something from my
work. So why not give it a try? The resulting piece was a post on Medium
called “Want
to grow as a service designer? Here are 3 skills you can
practice.”
Why Strategic Service Design
Linn gave me some great advice — write about what you want to read
about. I noticed a gap in service design resources, which focused more
on methods and less on how to apply them within the specific constraints
and affordances of an organization, which to me, signals the strategic
thinking of a more senior service designer. My Medium post touched on
this:
“However, as I progressed in my service design career, I found fewer
resources for growing into a more senior-level designer and ultimately
having more impact across an organization. I expected was uncovering
more concrete methods and tools, but what I realized is that a lot of
the things that helped me level up are intangible and hard to find in a
methods book. In fact, creating service blueprints is the least valuable
part of what I do now.”
I would love to use this blog to help fill that gap for other
practitioners.
What to expect
I decided to start this blog as part of the Wiggle Work
Winter Writing Workshop. Wiggle
Work is a Discord community for remote tech and tech-adjacent
workers to connect with each other. Folks in the Wiggle Work community
who are participating in the Winter Writing Workshop will each publish a
blog post every Wednesday in January. I have been a pretty quiet member
of the Discord but decided to get out of my comfort zone and use this
workshop as a way to get to know others in the community and encourage
myself to write more.
When I am developing a habit or setting a goal, I am more likely to
commit when I have external accountability. For example, I am much more
likely to work out if I have signed up for a group fitness class or a
5K. (Not sure how likely I can commit to a half marathon again these
days with kids, but we’ll see.) When I set out to start a writing habit,
I had more success with exploring ideas, following through with a first
draft, and eventually pressing publish because I had someone to keep me
accountable like Linn. Now, what better way to continue to develop my
writing practice than with a friendly community of folks who are doing
the same thing?
What might or might not come next
I’m not sure where this blog will go once January is over, if anywhere,
and I’m perfectly okay with that. In the past, whenever I tried to write
something, my desire to get it right got in the way of
publishing it. I talked myself out of even exploring certain topics out
of fear they wouldn’t resonate, and if I did start a draft, it
languished from over-editing. Now, I am content to just see what
happens.This space feels like a low-pressure and fun way to see how my
writing takes shape.
I am all about low barriers to entry when developing a habit, so set up
this website in a matter of minutes via Blot.im. which auto-publishes
text files that I upload to a Dropbox folder. It can’t get much easier
than that!
I hope you can follow along! Thanks for reading.