Service Design Principles 1-100

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Service Design Principles 1–100
100 ideas to improve the 
user and customer 
experience in simple 
and practical ways.
By Daniele Catalanotto, foreword by Pascal Wicht
Service 
Design 
Principles 
1-100
100 ideas to improve the user 
and customer experience in 
simple and practical ways.
Daniele Catalanotto
Thanks, Joëlle, for being an angel on Earth.
Foreword
At the beginning of the 20th century, we were 1.6 
billion humans on Earth. In 2000, we reached 6.1 bil-
lion. Today, we’re heading towards 8. We’ve built vast 
cities that interconnect megacities, gigantic airports, 
railway systems, global supply chains, the internet, 
the mobile economy, the social media platforms, and 
the blockchains. We’ve entered what Parag Khanna 
calls the connectographic era. Every day, these 8 bil-
lion people try to get things done by asking someone 
for it or by utilizing something that has been provi-
ded by someone else. This usually happens with the 
help of what is called a service.
Yet, for most of us, the very notion of service relates 
to frustrated customers, unpleasant experiences, and 
users rage-quitting or angrily confronting service pro-
viders. In several cases, customers feel that services 
have their own realities. A bubble of rules and regu-
lations, of processes and guidelines. How many times 
have we encountered the sorry excuse of “the sys-
tem doesn’t allow me to do that”. Services are often 
orchestrated with bureaucratic mindsets that have 
poor to no meaning for the customers. Even worse, 
they are designed with a completely ideal imagina-
ry customer in mind. Moreover, services too often 
reveal the caricature of organizational dysfunctions 
and management failures. What makes sense in the 
boardroom, on a PowerPoint, is often irrelevant and 
counterproductive for the end user on the frontline.
This global and busy complex world is often a mess. 
Work is hard and our bureaucratic legacy institutions 
are struggling to cope with massive changes amidst the 
chaos. The signages, urban mobility visual wayfinding 
systems, advertising, guidelines, logos, posters, notifica-
tions, alerts, and messages everywhere are all designed 
to help us, to guide us and to warn us. They all try to help 
us use services better. From right in the morning, as we 
turn off the alarm app, to the moment we put our mobile 
phones away to sleep, we are overwhelmed with infor-
mation. It doesn’t stop. Not just the ads and the emails, 
but everything, all the time—the rich and constant flow 
of information flowing through our senses. If autistic 
people process everything they perceive around them 
as information, most of us don’t. We have built certain 
habits and mechanisms. Our brains have adapted to the 
situations around us. We have skills to surf this global 
tsunami of sensory information—nicely automated and 
active in the background of our brains, acting as our own 
private mental autopilot. Silently in the backstage, it 
filters and edits what matters and what doesn’t.
Today, designers have become experts at distinguishing 
the differences between what people say they do and 
what they actually do. As we’re often not aware of the 
decisions and trade-offs that our minds operate for us, 
interacting with services can quickly take a turn for the 
worse. In this global context, helping your users, your 
customers get what they want requires a certain level of 
skills in hacking these autopilot routines or sometimes 
leveraging them. This requires not only the ability to 
use well-known human patterns of behaviors but also 
knowing when to break them. This is the purpose of this 
book. A general body of knowledge aimed at doing 
just that. For anybody working in the service indus-
try, this will guide you through the simple adjust-
ments and tweaks you can make that will ease both 
your services and your users’ experiences.
Daniele will help your services reach beyond the 
objective and transactional reality of business and 
trade. As an expert service designer, with this book, 
he proposes to anchor your services on a solid and 
deep underlying structure of psychologically mea-
ningful axioms. However – and that is all the genius 
of the author – he does it in the most accessible and 
ready-to-use way.
Pascal Wicht, Founder, 
Strategic Designer at Whispers & Giants
Introduction
Be Aware That This Is Not a Classi-
cal Book About Service Design
Let me frustrate smart intellectual minds from the 
start.
With this handbook, I don’t want to preach the high 
value of Service Design. I don’t want to explain all 
the theoretical details about it. This book doesn’t res-
pect academic principles. This book doesn’t give an 
overview of what Service Design is. This book doesn’t 
detail design methods. Some other people do that 
much better than me. If you are looking for this type 
of content, stop reading this book after this chapter.
Before you stop reading, here are two suggestions, 
if you want this type of content. Open your browser 
and google “This Is Service Design Thinking.” It’s a 
great book by Jakob Schneider and Marc Stickdorn. 
In that, they explain what Service Design is in detail. 
Or google “Service Design: From Insight to Implemen-
tation.” It’s a book by Andy Polaine, Ben Reason, and 
Lavrans Løvlie. Andy is the person who brought me 
into the world of Service Design and made me love 
it. So, this book is a good start, if you want to have a 
good understanding of the Service Design practice in 
general. If you are still here and didn’t open Google, 
keep on reading to discover what this book is about. 
Oh! And thanks for not leaving, I really like your ad-
venturous mindset.
Introduction 
A handbook for business owners 
who don’t give a fuck about 
Service Design and need practical 
rules of thumb.
Services Are Everywhere.
I live in Switzerland. Here, around 70% of the active 
population works in the service industries. Services 
are everywhere and are the heart of our economy. Is 
it like that only in my little country? In its “World 
Development Indicators,” the World Bank Group ex-
plains that the service sector continues to dominate 
in high-income countries. The service sector ac-
counted for nearly 75% of the GDP of these countries 
in 2014. 
But Service Design is still obscure. The way we set 
up human interaction between humans and services 
is obscure. The way we can design the experience 
between you and your bank, church, and hospital is 
pretty obscure. This little handbook gives 100 tiny 
and simple principles, ideas, or advice to help design 
better services.
What this book is about
The hypothesis of this handbook is that you don’t 
need to understand the full extent of Service Design 
to improve the user and customer experience. You 
don’t need to understand all the theory to create 
great services. 
This hypothesis is inspired by a study by Alejandro 
Drexler, Greg Fischer, and Antoinette Schoar. They 
wanted to figure out the best way to help micro-en-
trepreneurs learn the basics of accounting. They 
had three groups of entrepreneurs. The first group 
received classical teaching, like in a university. They 
received complex knowledge, which they had to 
master. The second group studied accounting with 
simple rules like “Keep personal and business mo-
ney in different drawers.” The third group didn’t 
receive any instruction. Interestingly, the first group, 
which received complete instructions, and the third 
group, which didn’t receive any, performed at the 
same level. But the group that received simple rules 
of thumb increased their sales by 25%. This group 
had also managed their accounting and cash in a 
much better way. 
Structure of the book
That’s why each principle in this handbook is sum-
marized in a simple rule of thumb. These simple 
rules of thumb should be enough for smart readers. 
You might find, under each principle, a little story, an 
example, or a study. This additional content can help 
you turn this principleinto action.
Origins of the principles
I gathered the principles of this handbook over the 
years from many different sources. I collected them 
in my own experience as a Service Designer and also 
used my experience as a user of different services. 
Many principles are also inspired by psychological 
studies, behavioral economics experiments, and 
Introduction 
other readings. All these principles try to help you 
build services that are less shitty for the humans 
who have to use them.
Penis Is a Wonderful Word.
Writing penis has a much higher probability of grab-
bing people’s attention than writing “How to use this 
book.” 
Not every principle will be helpful for your particular 
situation. A good strategy is to only read the stories of 
the principles with a title that attracted your atten-
tion.
This is really a handbook. So, feel free to cherry pick, 
and do not read everything. The principles of this 
book are not placed in a hierarchical order. It just 
made more sense to put them in that order for the 
crazy ones who would read the hand book from start 
to finish.
Introduction 
Chapter 1
What Are the Basics of 
Service Design?
What Are the Basics of Service Design
Principle 001
The First Draft of Anything Is Shit.
You have a great idea for a new service or product. 
Great. I can already tell you one thing: it’s shit. 
This principle was already described by Ernest He-
mingway. He said that the first draft of anything is 
shit. What does that mean for you, as a service crea-
tor? The first draft that you create is only a starting 
point. Your first idea is not important. It’s what you 
make out of your first draft that matters. 
First drafts are of great value because they help you 
go out and test your ideas with your users. Why 
would you do that? Because, in the end, it’s your 
customers who have to use your service or product. A 
first shitty draft is a great way to get a lot of feedback 
from your customers.
What Are the Basics of Service Design
Principle 002
Selling Is Not the End, It’s the Start.
Many businesses focus all their efforts into selling 
their services and products. But that’s only the start 
of the relationship. Imagine handling human rela-
tionships like that. It would mean that you would 
be awesome at dating. But once you have sex, there 
would not be any more nice movie nights with po-
pcorn. There would be no more careful listening. No 
more buying yellow roses because she is someone 
unique.
In Service Design, we define different stages of how 
people experience a service. The first two are the sel-
ling moments: making people “aware” that you exist 
and letting them “join” the service. Then, there is a 
stage called “Use and develop.” This is when the cus-
tomer discovers the service. The customer develops 
his knowledge of the service. This is when the user 
becomes really great at using the service. Ultimately, 
users also “leave.” We hope some of the users who 
leave will come back. That’s the “Rejoin” phase. 
Take all these steps into consideration, and don’t 
focus your energy only on selling. 
What Are the Basics of Service Design
Principle 003
Make It Easy for Customers 
to Come Back.
There are few services that customers use once and 
then leave forever. For most services, people come 
back. This comeback moment in the customer expe-
rience is often forgotten. 
“Why do I have to fill all my personal information 
again, if I did business with you already once?” “Why 
don’t you remember my name if it’s the second 
time I come to your shop?” “Why do I have to sign a 
contract again, if it’s the tenth time we are working 
together?” 
These are questions that you can use when you de-
sign your service for the “rejoin” moment too. What 
can you do to make the comeback easier?
What Are the Basics of Service Design
Principle 004
Always Think About What Happens 
Before and After Your Service.
Your service is not the only one your customers will 
experience. Your service is only a tiny part that helps 
your customers either do their job or achieve a per-
sonal goal. What are the other products and services 
that your customers use before coming to you? What 
services do they use after your service?
It’s important to discover what happens before and 
after. This will help you make the customer’s transi-
tion from the previous service to your service simple 
and easy.
Knowing what comes before and after also helps in 
optimizing your service. You will see that one part of 
your service is often not used but is utilized by your 
customers when they move on to the next service. 
This means you could remove this part from your ser-
vice. You can do that because your customers prefer 
to do it in the next part of their journey.
What Are the Basics of Service Design
Principle 005
Every Customer Mistake 
Is Your Mistake.
Need to repeat yourself? It’s your mistake. Do you 
have to explain some aspects of your business or 
working method again and again? Maybe you need to 
stop assuming that what you do is clear and evident. 
Maybe you need to use simpler words or explain 
more clearly. 
Your customers don’t get your budgets? It’s your mis-
take. One of your customers didn’t understand the 
budget and is now pissed off by some extra costs? It’s 
your mistake. It’s time to redesign your budgets. Or 
maybe it’s time to set up a one-to-one session about 
the budget with your customer. In such a session, you 
could go through each point and explain what is in-
cluded. And you could explain what is definitely not 
included. You could do that instead of only sending 
the offers. You could do that instead of hoping your 
customers will understand your jargon.
What Are the Basics of Service Design
Principle 006
It’s Your Fucking Job to Know 
What I Should Buy.
Each time I go to a flower shop, I tell the florist the 
same thing—“I have no clue how to choose flowers. 
What do you recommend for this occasion, for this 
kind of person?” Each time I asked this question, the 
florist couldn’t give me clear options. “We have this, 
or that, or that…” Those situations are missed oppor-
tunities. 
If a customer doesn’t want to choose, give him one 
clear suggestion. With this suggestion, you can even 
set the tone of your service. Your answers enhance 
the storytelling or branding of your service. If, for 
example, you want to be the most empathic service, 
make your answer something like the following sen-
tence. “Many women like roses. But choosing another 
color than the classical red color will show your wife 
that she is really important to you and unique.”
As a customer, if I’m not in the mood to choose, then 
I pay you to choose for me. Or at least, I pay you to 
give me a clear option.
Chapter 2
How Can You Make 
People Less Frustrated?
Chapter 2
Error management
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 007
Don’t Solve Every Problem 
You Are Asked to Solve.
Customers sometimes complain and give you a lot of 
problems to solve. If you ask for feedback, you have 
even more potential problems to solve. Don’t solve 
all these problems. If you do, you might only create 
more problems for your customers.
Instead, consider each of these customer problems as 
a symptom of a deeper problem. Ask yourself why it 
happened. Have an answer? Great, now ask yourself 
again why this happened. Do it until you can’t ask 
the “why” question anymore. Now, you have the root 
cause that you should fix. 
For example, a customer might complain that your 
staff is rude. Ask the team why this happened. They 
will tell you something like “We were too stressed, so 
we weren’t nice to the customers.” “Hmmm, but why 
were you so stressed?” “Because, with the new regis-
tration process, we have much more work.” In this 
example, the real problem would be the registration 
process. Of course, you will also have to remind your 
staff to be politer.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle008
Do the Penis Test and Think 
About What Could Go Wrong.
Chatroulette is an example of a service that some 
weird people misused. At its launch, this service put 
two random strangers in contact via video. This is a 
great app that lets users meet new people from all 
around the world. But soon, creeps misused the app 
for exhibitionism, pornography, and other shocking 
live videos.
When you design a service, always think about how 
it could be misused. Could someone show his penis? 
Where? Could someone write something about his 
penis? Could someone do something inappropriate? 
This is what I call the penis test.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 009
Let Users Undo Their Mistakes.
In this digital age, there is one invention that is 
amazing: the trash bin. This little feature is one of the 
most useful ones. Be it in your computer’s operating 
system, or in services, or apps like WordPress. We 
all know how important it is to have a trash bin. But 
if this feature is so useful, why isn’t it implemented 
everywhere? Laziness. That’s the answer.
If a user can delete something, he should always 
have a possibility to bring it back. What does that 
mean for your service? What can people erase, put in 
the trash, or delete? If you can’t create a “trash bin,” 
where customers can go to retrieve deleted items, 
then make it harder to delete stuff. Instead of only 
asking people for a confirmation, make them think. 
For example, you can ask them to write a word to 
complete the deletion. This extra friction creates a 
so-called “decision point.” This decision point will 
make the user realize what he is about to do.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 010
Explain Why This Error 
Just Happened.
Each day, I travel at least three hours in the train 
through Switzerland. This means that, sometimes, 
even with the Swiss precision, my train is late. The 
Swiss railways use a simple trick to help the user 
make sense of this frustrating experience. 
A few years ago, the announcement made by the 
company to the travelers was just “We will arrive 
with a delay of five minutes.” Today, they always use 
a sentence like the following: “Our train will have a 
delay of five minutes because it had to wait for ano-
ther train.” 
The simple fact of explaining why things happen 
helps the traveler be less frustrated. Before the com-
pany introduced these explanations, one got frus-
trated with the company and the situation. Today, as 
a traveler, I get frustrated with the situation, not the 
company.
The example of the Swiss railway company helps 
us to build the following rule. Always explain why a 
problem happens. Give meaning to the situation.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 011
Suggest Something After the Error.
Notifying people that something went wrong is good. 
Helping them come out of a bad situation is better. 
The typical 404 error page on a website is dumb. It 
says sorry. It says that a page is missing. That’s it. But 
if you want to serve your customers well, you should 
help them recover from mistakes. For example, in a 
404 error page, you could display pages which have 
a similar title than the broken web page address. 
People who made a spelling mistake when entering 
the web address would then see a suggestion with 
the page they were trying to open.
What is true for the dumb 404 error page goes for 
any error message. For example, a customer asks for a 
product you don’t have. Don’t tell him that you don’t 
have and leave it at that. Give your customer the 
address of another store where the user could find 
the product he wants. If there is a problem, offer a 
solution. 
Next time you design the way you handle errors, 
consider the following questions. What is the solu-
tion you are suggesting? What is the extra value you 
can offer in this shitty moment? What is the next 
step for the customer?
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 012
Stop Giving Coupons 
When You Failed.
A guy buys flowers for his girlfriend only when he 
messes up. The trick worked well for the first few 
times. The girlfriend forgives him easily. But, after 
the guy uses the same trick dozens of times, the 
situation changes. When the girlfriend sees the guy 
with a beautiful flower bouquet, she instantly gets 
pissed off. That’s exactly what happens with cou-
pons.
A guy tricking his girlfriend with flowers is an 
asshole. A company tricking its customers with 
coupons is the same. Coupons should be surprises. 
When they serve as surprises for the customers, they 
get excited, happy, and are thankful. If we use it as a 
way to lower the negative feedback, it will sooner or 
later backfire. 
When everything is expected, you get bored. When 
the reaction to failure is predictable, people see you 
as a manipulator. To avoid this, surprise your cus-
tomers by being extra nice when you fail, and do 
this without a coupon. And give coupons only when 
everything is okay again.
Chapter 2
Waiting
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 013
Just Tell Me How Much Time 
I Have to Wait.
One of the things that makes me go crazy is when I 
go to a counter and then hear the staff ask me to wait. 
What makes me a bit angry in those situations is not 
that I have to wait but that I don’t know for how long. 
Should I take my laptop out of my bag and start wor-
king for a bit? Can I make that important phone call 
now or will I be called upon at the moment I start 
talking? 
People do not like this kind of uncertainty. And this 
is even truer when it comes to waiting. How can you 
fix this? When your staff ask people to wait, let them 
tell the customer how much time they have to wait 
for. It’s that simple. 
Rory Sutherland explains the value of this simple tip. 
The London Underground analyzed the passenger sa-
tisfaction. The company discovered what change had 
the biggest impact per pound spent. It wasn’t faster, 
more frequent, or later running trains. It was putting 
screens on the platform to tell users when the next 
train would arrive.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 014
Let Me Imagine the Waiting Time.
I arrived during the rush hour at the JFK airport in 
New York. I had to queue for a few hours in snake-
like waiting lines. When I joined the queue, I thought 
I was able to see the end. So, in my head, I had a 
type of progress bar showing the end of this shitty 
situation. The problem was that it was an evil staff 
member who created this queue. Instead of ending 
at the extreme border, it continued for at least two 
turns in the opposite direction. It gets worse. The 
queue designer was really in an evil mood that day. 
Once you got out of the snake-like queue, you had to 
join single line queues alongside 5 to 10 people. In 
my head, I had to re-evaluate the waiting time twice. 
I was pissed—twice—as the waiting time I imagined 
was wrong. 
What does this mean for you? When you are creating 
a queue, always try to make the end of the line “vi-
sible.” People stuck in the queue can then estimate 
the waiting time for themselves.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 015 
The Length of the Line Is as 
Important as the Waiting Time.
When you go out shopping, the typical nightmare is 
the checkout line. As a business owner, you might 
think that what is important is to make the waiting 
time shorter. Sorry to disappoint you. There is ano-
ther factor that has a lot of influence. 
The length of the waiting line matters even when 
the wait is short. This finding comes from a paper by 
researchers Yina Lu, Andrés Musalem, Marcelo Oli-
vares, and Ariel Schilkrut. Stores with longer chec-
kout lines sold fewer items. And this, regardless of 
the actual speed of the line.
What this piece of research teaches us is to first 
change the perception of the problem. The waiting 
line should look short so that people believe the wai-
ting time is short. Workingon the perception of the 
problem is often much cheaper than fixing the whole 
problem.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 016
After an 8-Minute Wait, 
People Will Abandon.
Waiting is something that frustrates everyone. We 
wait for the bus to arrive. We wait to get served in 
a restaurant. We wait in a queue to pay. When does 
this frustration become too big so that people give up 
what they were trying to do?
Research from the Omnico Group shows what the 
waiting limit is. After waiting for eight minutes, Ame-
ricans were likely to drop their basket. After these 
eight minutes, they would abandon their trolley and 
leave the store. Is it exactly after eight minutes that 
everyone stops their waiting? No. It’s an average, and 
it differs from region to region. For example, it seems 
that the Brits are two minutes less patient than the 
Americans. 
What these numbers show us is that people are not 
patient. Even if they are only one step away from 
going home with their favorite food. Until the last 
step of the buying process, we should make the ex-
perience short and enjoyable.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 017
Tell Me as Soon as Possible That 
You Can’t Do Anything for Me.
I was in Berlin and was waiting in a line to enter in 
the Reichstag. After a few seconds of waiting, a staff 
member came through the line. He asked “Do you 
already have your tickets? If not, you have to get one 
in the other building.” Okay, usually I hate that it’s 
not clear where to buy tickets. But, at least I didn’t 
have to wait 20 minutes before another staff member 
told me that I was in the wrong spot. It’s better to 
frustrate users now than after a long waiting time.
In Swiss train stations, when there is a long line, staff 
members come through the line. They ask if cus-
tomers want to buy a ticket. If it’s the case, the staff 
member will do the task for the user at the vending 
machine. But they do it in a way that the user learns 
how to use the machine. So next time, this user will 
not wait in the queue but go directly to the vending 
machine and buy the ticket on his own.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 018
Phone Chargers Help People 
Wait in Peace.
Today, a smartphone is an excellent way to escape 
the boredom that you experience in a waiting room. 
Instead of looking at the clock ticking, you can play 
games, read the news, or watch videos. I observed 
that in most waiting rooms, users rely on their smart-
phones to save them from this living hell.
This means that all the beautiful brochures you add 
in your waiting room are most of the time useless. So, 
don’t put too much energy in those. Just buy some 
books or magazines that don’t become old too fast, 
thus leaving also your staff with less maintenance 
work. 
When users don’t have power on their phone, then 
the waiting experience is like hell. They have this 
beautiful piece of technology, which would make 
them happy, but they can’t use it. Put charging cables 
next to the users’ seats. Your customers will love you 
for that. And the waiting time will seem much shor-
ter for them.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 019
It’s Torture to Forbid People from 
Using Their Smartphone.
Once again, I was in a waiting room. There was a sign 
forbidding the use of smartphones. It was, however a 
short waiting time—mere minutes. But, oh boy! It felt 
so long. Nothing to read. Nothing to do. Just waiting. 
A study published in the Science Journal can ex-
plain why this wait is so painful. The study found out 
that people prefer self-inflicted electric shocks than 
spending time alone with just their thoughts.
Letting people wait without any possibility of doing 
something is like torture. One of the easiest ways to 
avoid this is, of course, to let people use their smart-
phones. On their smartphone, they find enough dis-
tractions. There is enough distraction to not want to 
receive electrical shocks. If you have to forbid tech-
nological devices, you should create distractions.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 020
Stupid Aquariums Make People 
Forget Time.
If you know me a bit, you know that I’m not such 
a big fan of aquariums. But I discovered that these 
strange objects are powerful in a waiting room. In my 
observations, kids would pass much time looking at 
the fishes swim about slowly in the water. And this, 
even if they had other toys around them. Even fun-
nier, many adults use the aquariums also as a coping 
mechanism to fight the waiting time, even when 
they have a smartphone, a TV screen to look at, or 
magazines to read.
Waiting rooms are little hells on Earth. But we can 
make them better if people get some entertainment 
in them. We can make them better if we help people 
escape them mentally. And for that, we don’t need 
expensive ideas—a simple and stupid aquarium 
works well.
Chapter 2
Pricing
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 021
The Problem Is Not the Interface, 
It’s the Pricing.
Bus ticket machines suck. The interface sucks. In 
Switzerland, many cities base their prices on zones. 
It makes the interface of the ticket machine super 
complicated. You have to choose the number of 
zones. Or you have to go for a daily ticket. Or maybe 
select a special ticket for short ride. But what exactly 
is a short ride? The interface of these machines can’t 
be simpler than the pricing of the service they sell.
If the pricing is complex, the interface will also be 
complex. Zones are great for transportation compa-
nies. But people don’t think in “zones.” People think 
in terms of locations (or streets and number). Cities 
like Reykjavik use a simpler pricing for their buses. 
You pay for a ride. That’s it.
The same goes for any place where your pricing is 
displayed. If your pricing is complex, you will need 
more pages on your website to describe all the diffe-
rent options. But when your pricing is simple, you 
won’t need to create all the content that explains 
how the pricing works.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 022
Show Me Your Damn Pricing.
Not showing your pricing and forcing people to ask 
for a quote sucks for the user. It’s only after many 
steps that he discovers that you are way too expen-
sive for him. Great. He lost about an hour for nothing, 
and your staff also lost much time on a lead that will 
not be profitable for you. You pissed this person. 
He will not refer you to friends who might use your 
service. And because of all the work your staff had 
to do to answer an unqualified lead, they are now 
exhausted. 
Instead, you could show your pricing. Let people 
know if you are too expensive for them. Your staff 
could focus on important leads. If your service is too 
complex to be displayed in a simple pricing table, 
then show what your hourly rate is. Don’t have an 
hourly rate? Show what the smallest budget to work 
with you is.
To me, there is only one case where you should hide 
your pricing. It’s in the luxury industry. Such ser-
vices need to maintain an aura of mystery. Here, not 
showing the price is part of the customer experience. 
It adds prestige to the service.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 023
The Price Changes the Quality 
Without Any Other Change.
Researchers from Stanford GSB and the California 
Institute of Technology found something interesting. 
The price tag you put on your product does not only 
change its image but how your brain reacts to it.
The researchers made people taste two wines. One 
priced at $45 and one priced at $5. The reaction of the 
brain’s region that experiences pleasure was inte-
resting. The user had more pleasure when he tastes 
the wine that is at $45. And you know what? Both 
wines were exactly the same. Researcher Baba Shiv 
explains that price can actually change the reality of 
the user. And this, without any other change than the 
price.
Chapter2
Impersonal services
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 024
Just Remember Me.
There is this great series on Netflix about chefs 
around the world. One of these chefs is Niki Naka-
yama. Of course, the food is amazing at the n/naka 
restaurant. The ingredients are well selected. But 
as a Service Designer, there is something else that 
interests me there. With her staff, they have a simple 
trick to make your experience special. They know 
the name of every customer that enters their restau-
rant and welcome him with his full name.
The staff at the restaurant go even further. They 
remember what the customer orders usually. They 
remember what allergies the customer has. Is this 
difficult to do? In our digital age, when we have CRM 
tools and customer databases, this is super simple 
to do. It just needs a bit of preparation. Before the 
customer arrives, you could check the registrations. 
Check the name and check the info of your database. 
You will make people feel unique. You will make 
your customers feel even more welcome.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 025
Ask Unnecessary 
Emotional Information.
When my wife went to buy her wedding dress, the 
process was highly emotional. She went on a road 
trip with her best friends, her mom, and her sister. 
They made a tour of all the boutiques she spotted on 
the Internet. After a day of tryouts, she found “the” 
dress. Apparently, girls know when they find “the” 
dress. What interests me in this story is what hap-
pened after the tryout. The boutique owner took her 
contact information. When my wife gave her last 
name, she gave her maiden name as we weren’t mar-
ried at that moment. 
The shop owner stopped her and asked: “Sorry, can 
you give me the name you will have after the mar-
riage?” She was so proud to use her new name for the 
first time.
This boutique owner was super smart. By asking her 
future last name, she made this shopping experience 
even more magic. She made the little princess dream 
come true. 
So, what’s the kind of emotional and unnecessary 
information you can ask that would make your cus-
tomers proud and happy?
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 026
Making It Personal Is Different 
for Every Culture.
Starbucks, Bern, Switzerland. I ask for a hot cho-
colate. Yes, I’m Italian and hate coffee. But I’m also 
Swiss and love milk. The waiter asks me my name. 
What the hell just happened? Do I know that guy? 
“Shit, is this the guy from the party of last week? Of 
course, I don’t remember his name neither is face.” “I 
need your first name to put it on the cup.” “Ah okay! I 
don’t know this guy! And he doesn’t know me either.” 
This situation shows that great ideas are sensible 
in context and culture. Being casual, friendly, and 
on a first name basis with your customer is well 
accepted in the US. So, it could make the shopping 
experience more personal in Switzerland too, right? 
No, in Switzerland, people are very formal. In a shop, 
vendors address you as “Sir.” A store owner never 
asks your first name. That’s for friends. Next time you 
try to make your business more personal, research 
the culturally accepted way of doing it. And then do 
some testing. How do people feel about it? Is it too 
intimate? Is it too formal?
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 027
Don’t Force Me to Call You.
As a digital native guy, there is one thing that bothers 
me again and again. I want to book a table at a res-
taurant, and the only contact possibility is a damn 
telephone number. Or I want to ask for information 
about a product, and again there is only a phone nu-
mber. Why would I call you if the only time I’m using 
the phone feature on my smartphone is to answer my 
grandma? Don’t get me wrong, having the choice to 
make a direct call is great, but it should be a choice. 
As a service creator, you should give me, at least, two 
possibilities to contact you. Give me the possibility 
to book my table through a form or call you directly.
If it’s late in the night, and I want to make my re-
servation faster, a simple email or form is so much 
better for you and me. As a user, I don’t have to find 
a way to remind myself to call you on the next day. 
And as a service provider, you don’t lose the cus-
tomer who can’t remember to call you later.
Always allow a direct and an asynchronous contact 
possibility for your customers.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 028
Don’t Create Groups of 
More Than 150 People.
Research shows that the human brain has a limit on 
the number of social relationships you can keep. We 
can maintain relationships with 100 to 250 indivi-
duals. The commonly used value for it is 150, and it is 
called the Dunbar Number. Armed forces around the 
world naturally organized themselves around this 
number even before the research existed.
But what does this mean for business owners? When 
you create events, keep in mind the 150 number; it 
will be harder for people to create and maintain rela-
tionships above this number. This number is rele-
vant for HR too. Companies like Gore-Tex apply this 
principle. They don’t have more than 150 employees 
in the same factory. And this helps them a lot. Gore-
Tex is considered to be one of the Fortune 100 Best 
Companies to Work for. By following the Dunbar 
Number, everyone knows everyone in the enterprise. 
And the vibe stays personal.
Chapter 2
Technology
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 029
Tools Are Not the Problem 
but the Symptom.
Many workers say that the problem of their producti-
vity lies in the tools they use. But what if the problem 
wasn’t the tool but the culture? What if the problem 
was the way workers use the tools? 
Another to-do list app will not help you achieve 
your tasks. Why do you feel unproductive? Because 
of the tools you use. Why do these tools make you 
unproductive? Maybe, because they are too complex. 
Why are there too complex? Maybe, because nobody 
trained you in how to use them. Why didn’t anybody 
train you to use them? Because your supervisor has 
no time to show you how things work in the com-
pany. Why can’t your supervisor show you the proper 
way to work? Because he has too many projects and 
is stressed like hell. Okay, this is a silly example, but 
you get the point. In this simple example, the tool 
isn’t the only problem. And it is often like that. 
Tools are the symptom of many other problems: trai-
ning, skills, fear of management, lack of curiosity, silo 
thinking, etc.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 030
Making It Digital Won’t 
Make It Smarter.
Some little shops, where you often go, give you some 
simple printed fidelity cards. You know, the one 
with the empty dots. When you arrive at 10 points, 
each point for a coffee you already had, you receive 
the 11th for free. One of these shops where I often go 
upgraded their fidelity cards. They don’t have dots 
anymore but a QR code. That seems smart. You keep 
the same card. You don’t have to throw the paper 
away for nothing. Smarter? No. The problem with this 
“upgrade” is that now I don’t have any idea when I 
will receive my gift. I could check with my smart-
phone. I could take it out, find a QR code scanner 
app. Install it and then scan the QR code. And then 
discover that I am far away from the gift. But I’m lazy! 
In fact, I haven’t scanned that dumb QR code even 
once. 
This experience shows that simple non-digital 
objects sometimes work fine. If something works 
already well in a non-digital form, don’t make it digi-
tal to make it sexy. It will only bother people.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 031
Scheduled Automation Is Stupid.
I arrived in a hotel in Sicily. It’s a region where it’s 
rather warm. Every hotel room has its own heating 
and cooling system. This is great. The hotel owners 
had the idea to automate the system to make the 
life of theircustomers easier. The problem is that 
this automated cooling system works with dates. I 
was happy to arrive in a sunny and hot day. But the 
automated system didn’t know that. For the cooling 
system, this day was in the cold days scheduling. 
This meant that they heated my room, even when it 
was warm outside. 
Nature and humans don’t stick to dates and hours. 
You should base your automation on contextual in-
formation. Use information like external temperature 
or the presence of someone. Even if an automation 
system is well done, give the possibility of a human 
to override it with ease. It doesn’t always have to be 
the customer. But at least your staff should be able 
to do it. And the staff should be able to do it without 
help of an external technical partner.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 032
A Bot Won’t Help Shape Your Culture.
Let’s imagine you are a cool casual startup. You set up 
a bot that recognizes formal and boring sentences. 
This bot sends a reminder to employees who write 
too formally. You do this to keep your cool and ca-
sual culture alive. Would that work? Imagine a new 
employee coming from a more formal background. 
He will have a hard time adapting his language. It 
will need time. But each time he writes formally, the 
bot will tell him that it’s a mistake. After a while, the 
employee will hate that stupid thing which always 
tells him that he is making mistakes. And, of course, 
the employee won’t change his behavior. In the end, 
you have a grumpy employee. 
To solve cultural problems, you need a human touch. 
You have to show people the benefits of new beha-
viors. You have to understand their fears about that 
new behavior. For example, if collaboration doesn’t 
happen because people are scared to make errors in 
public, better software won’t help. Neither a bot. You, 
first, have to respect and fix human emotions like 
fear to shape culture. Then you can put technology in 
place to boost it further.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 033
I Prefer Bots over Fake Humans.
A study by Gartner says that by 2020 85% of the rela-
tionships between an enterprise and customers will 
be done without interacting with a human. That’s 
why in the last few months I tried out many bots. 
After many experiments, I arrived at the following 
conclusion. I prefer a clear bot to a fake human. Some 
companies try to create bots which act like little fake 
humans. They have names. They make little jokes. 
People interacting with these bots do not even know 
that they are interacting with a bot. Such fake bots 
are, at least for now, a bad idea. Why? 
Because there will always be a moment when the 
bot, as smart as it is, fails. And a bot which fails in 
pretending to be human is way more bad than a 
human failing at delivering good service. When the 
bot, which we thought was a human, fails and shows 
us its real nature, we feel fucked. We feel manipu-
lated. But if it is evident from the beginning that the 
interaction that I am having is with a bot, I am more 
flexible. When the bot makes a mistake, it makes me 
feel that I’m smarter than the smartest technology 
out there.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 034
Let Me Speak with a Human.
When a bot fails, forcing the customer to continue to 
interact with the bot is dumb. 
When a bot can’t answer my question, I try again 
and again with other formulations. When the bot 
still tells me that he doesn’t understand my ques-
tion after the 10th time, I get really pissed. When a 
bot fails, we should allow people to switch to human 
interaction. And this, before it’s the 10th time the bot 
fails. It’s like when you are in a shop and ask a ven-
dor for something and he doesn’t know the answer. 
He will tell you: “Sorry I don’t know, I can bring in my 
colleague who knows more about this topic.” 
So, when you create a bot, always add a button that 
lets a human take over the conversation. 
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 035
Why Can’t I Answer This Email?
You just received an email notification. You might 
have a question about what’s written in there. But 
wait a second. The email address is donotreply@
lazycompany.com. Hmmm. Seriously, who sends a 
letter to someone and then signs “Do not reply” at 
the end? It’s not only a bit impolite but also terrible 
from a user experience point of view. 
What happens if the notification you are sending 
me is not clear enough for me? What you are telling 
me is that, as a company, you don’t care. Why do you 
send me a message if you don’t want to communicate 
with me?
Tiny things like the email address you use for your 
notifications make a big difference. Many companies 
have understood that and stopped sending emails 
from generic address. They now use the name of a 
support person and send the emails in his name. 
Then, the emails are much more personal. And when 
you do that, there is a higher chance of your users 
opening your notification messages as they are not 
anymore stupid robot notifications.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 036
It’s Now Time to Websites That 
React to the Context.
Big companies like Facebook use a lot of data to 
make their service more relevant to you. They show 
you content that should be interesting for you, and 
no one has the same Facebook home page. Super per-
sonal. That is great, but how can you do something 
like Facebook when you are a small company? You 
can use some super simple data from the context of 
the user.
It’s late in the night, and I’m visiting a company 
website. It doesn’t make sense to have their phone 
number in a big font and at the top of the contact 
information. At night, they will not answer my call, 
so I would prefer to first see their email address. If I 
visit a shop website during the opening hours, let me 
know that you are open. A company which sells clo-
thes could use the weather data. For example, they 
could have a home page that shows sunglasses when 
it’s hot and warm. 
All these examples are super simple to do, and you 
don’t need a rocket scientist to do it, you just need to 
think a little bit about the context of your customers.
Chapter 2
Workplace
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 037
To Improve Your Service, Start by 
Paying Your Employees Well.
Why do some tourists receive an awful welcome in 
Sicily? Because of bad service? Yes and no. Because 
the receptionist isn’t paid well. I’m a Swiss Sicilian 
guy, and I still have some family in Sicily. It’s fasci-
nating to see that it’s a region that has all the attri-
butes of a top location for tourists. And at the same 
time, many tourists never come back.
The problem that the Sicilian tourism industry faces 
is the evil loop of bad wages. Because the economic 
situation is bad, people aren’t paid well. Because 
people aren’t paid well, they don’t want to go the 
extra mile in their job. Because employees treat tou-
rists like shit, they don’t come back. Because tourists 
don’t come back, the economic situation is bad. Who 
would care about pleasing a tourist when you are 
paid only fewer than 1000 bucks to do it? And this, 
when your rent costs 500 bucks. Nobody. 
You can only ask someone to care about the service 
that they provide if you show them respect. And this 
starts with their salary.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 038
Make Your Employees Happy, They 
Will Be Better Service Providers.
A study conducted by researchers Andrew J. Oswald, 
Eugenio Proto, and Daniel Sgroi shows something 
interesting. Happier individuals have approximately 
12% greater productivity.
It’s important to come back to the basics sometimes. 
Happy humans are often better humans. And it’s our 
job, as service creators and business owners, to make 
the people around us happy. It’s our task to do so, not 
only because we are people lovers but also because it 
will have an impact on our business.Happier people 
deliver better services.
Another fundamental truth that I focus on again and 
again is the following. A happy employee will be 
much nicer with frustrated customers.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 039
Work Can Wait.
We live in an age of constant communication and 
real-time feedback. The business mindset and the 
technology make us all connected workers. Connec-
ted workers can work from home. They can work on 
the bus. They can work on their smartphones in their 
bed. That’s all great progress. The problem is that 
most people stick with the default options for their 
devices. This means that people get disturbed by any 
tiny work notification. They get disturbed right be-
fore they go to sleep via their smartphone. They get 
disturbed in the bus. 
Some smart companies like Basecamp, which creates 
a task management app, understood this well. They 
try to make us, by default, enjoy our family evening. 
With their feature “Work Can Wait” they set up a 
default timeframe when the app will send push no-
tifications. Outside of these hours you won’t receive 
notifications. At least that’s the default setting. If 
you want to be deeply involved with work outside of 
office hours, then you can change the settings. As a 
service creator, what can you do to not disrupt the fa-
mily time of your customers? And how can you make 
this respect visible to them?
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 040
Your Open Space Is like Hell.
Imagine a place where you can’t focus on your tasks. 
Imagine a place where everyone comes and disturbs 
you. Imagine a place so loud that when you are on 
the phone, you have to scream so that the people 
at the end of the line can hear you. Can you picture 
that? That’s a classical open space.
Many studies show the negative impact that this 
kind of workplace can have. The numbers are stun-
ning. Open spaces create a 32% drop in workers well-
being. They generate a 15% reduction of productivity. 
And 86 minutes per day per employee are lost due to 
distractions in open spaces.
You might think that 86 minutes per day not that 
much. But if you do some simple math, you will see 
the huge effect. Let’s say your company has about 20 
employees. With this level of distractions, it would 
be like paying three employees to do nothing.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 041
Mistakes Are Worthy Only 
If You Share Them.
Allowing employees to fail is great, but it’s even more 
powerful when they share these errors. Then, the 
others don’t have to make mistakes themselves to 
learn.
I think it’s important to create rituals that help em-
ployees share their mistakes without fear. You could, 
for example, have a “learning wall” filled up with 
Post-its. Each time an employee makes a mistake 
which could be helpful for others, the employee can 
stop working. And he, then, can write down the mis-
take on the “learning wall.” “I made this tiny mistake, 
and here is what I learned.” By doing so, we celebrate 
errors. We show that work can wait until we have 
all learned something. You could review the Post-
its every week or month with the team. Do we need 
to update a checklist? Do we need to put an alert 
somewhere in the system? Should employees add a 
little word in the Post-its that they already have un-
der their computer screens? Such rituals could help a 
team learn faster.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 042
Employees Should Check Their 
Emails Less Often.
The University of British Columbia in Vancouver 
found out something interesting about emails. Em-
ployees who check their email inbox only three 
times per day are less stressed than those who do 
it as often as they want. You just have to allow your 
employees to check their emails less often, and they 
will already feel better. 
The digital revolution brings real-time information. 
The problem is that it is done in a way where we are 
not ready to handle this information overflow. Real-
time feedback means that you break the focus of 
employees through the whole day. When you try to 
replace emails with instant messaging, you should 
be careful about this particular point. If you ask your 
employees to be aware of any information in real-
time, you are basically asking them not to be focused. 
I think we should use this rule of the three checking 
times per day in collaboration and chat tools too.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 043
Put Some Stupid Plants to Make 
Your Workplace Better.
Creating a better workplace is a challenging task. We 
often believe that we need completely new architec-
ture, new furniture, or new technologies. But in fact, 
there are super-simple things you can do today to 
improve the workplace. 
A study by Dr. Chris Knight from Exeter University 
and his colleagues shows that putting some plants 
in the workplace has a big impact. Plants in an office 
created a 15% increase in productivity. You haven’t 
changed anything in your office, you just added a few 
cheap plants. Another great impact of plants found 
in another study is that they reduce fatigue by 30%. 
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 044
You Need to Repeat a Behavior for 
66 Days to Create a New Habit.
People are lazy. They don’t want to change the usual 
way they have to do things. Employees stick to the 
old processes. We are all lazy. Researchers have pu-
blished in the European Journal of Social Psychology 
what is needed to make a new behavior stick. On 
average, you need to repeat new habits, like exerci-
sing, for 66 days for the habit to stick. But this can 
take up to four times longer for some people.
What this means for business owners is that it’s slow 
to bring change. Training is fast. But making people 
experience the benefit of a new behavior takes a 
lot of time. So, if you are bringing a new process in a 
company, the minimum time to make it happen is 
about 13 work weeks. That’s more than three months. 
Rapid change is a myth.
Chapter 2
Naming
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 045
Give Everything a Name.
When a new little human comes to life, his parents 
give him a name. They take much time and care to 
find a proper name. A name which sounds good. A 
name which is future-proof (“will other kids make 
fun of him?”). It should be the same for every service, 
idea, product, or feature we create. A good name sets 
the tone of your service. 
A few years ago, an NGO searched a name for their 
local headquarters. They could just call it “the office.” 
But the NGO staff wanted to show people that they 
were popular, down to earth and locals. The street 
in which the headquarters is located is the “Street 
Max Huber.” So, after a bit of research, they chose the 
name “Chez Max.” This name had all the attributes 
they cared about. It wasn’t a simple thing to spread 
that name. In the first weeks, the team forced them-
selves never to say the word “the office.” They had to 
create a habit. After a few weeks, the habit stuck in 
the group. After a few months, the habit stuck in the 
town. Today, it’s just normal to call that NGO local 
office “Chez Max.”
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 046
Stop Inventing Silly Names 
for Standard Stuff.
Marketers always give fancy names to everything. 
The problem is when you start to invent new names 
for things that were clear to people before. When you 
give fancy names to things that were clear, you might 
create a better storytelling. But then, you can create 
confusion as people don’t know any longer what they 
are looking at.
In a study of NGO websites, the Nielsen Norman 
Group found exactly that. In their study, they 
highlight one example that I found particularly inte-
resting. The “I Have a Dream” Foundation referred to 
the people they helped as “dreamers.” This confused 
users who were trying to understand what the orga-
nization did.
Name things that peopledon’t know how to name. 
Don’t rename things that are already clear in a fancy 
manner that will confuse people. Something boring 
is better than something that is exciting but unclear.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 047
Don’t Assume That I Know How to 
Spell Your Company Name.
Kellogs or is it Kellogg’s? It’s a Saturday morning, I’m 
eating breakfast. The box of cornflakes I’m eating 
from has an ad for a contest. I type the web page 
address to join the contest. After typing the name, I 
landed on a weird website. It’s only after a few se-
conds that I noticed that this page wasn’t about Kel-
logg’s at all. I had just misspelled the brand name.
Kellogg’s is the kind of name you see every day. It’s 
so well known that we all should know how to spell 
it. But that morning I just did it wrong, and it wasn’t 
the best experience possible. 
Was it my mistake? In fact, it wasn’t. It’s a weird 
name in my native language. We never see words 
with a double g. The solution to this tiny problem 
is also tiny. Don’t be so proud of your brand name. 
Admit that others don’t know how to spell it. And in 
the end, buy the domains with spelling errors. If you 
don’t do it, somebody else with fewer good inten-
tions will do it. 
Chapter 2
Other Frustrations
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 048
Your Opening Hours Don’t 
Make Any Sense.
You need to go to your bank, but you have a job. 
These two conditions often don’t work together. Your 
bank has the same working hours that you have at 
your job. So, you have to go to the bank during your 
work time. Should you take a vacation day to open 
a bank account? This doesn’t make sense. Opening 
hours should work for your customers.
It’s the type of customers that you have that defines 
your opening hours. Are you doing business with 
consumers? Then, your opening hours should be 
outside of their working hours. This can be as simple 
as being open during the lunch time. Or you could be 
open a little bit after most people finish their job. 
If you look at the attendance of shops in Google, 
you’ll see that many businesses have more visitors 
during the lunch break or right after office hours. 
So dear banks, being open from 9 am to 12 am and 
then back from 1:30 pm to 5 pm is total nonsense for 
customers.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 049
I Don’t Want to Schedule an 
Appointment When There Is 
Someone at the Counter!
I wanted to open a new bank account. I go to my 
bank, and great! There are three staff members avai-
lable behind their desks. I ask one for opening my 
new bank account. Oh no! That’s not possible, be-
cause only a counselor can do it. With online banks, 
I can open a bank account in eight minutes from my 
sofa. Here, I had to wait a week to open an account. 
Let’s be serious for a minute. Making your customer 
wait one week to do business with you even when 
you know what he wants and that he wants to do 
it now is suicide! If the customer doesn’t love your 
brand, he will just flee and go somewhere else. There 
are basic tasks like preparing documents which any 
staff member needs to be able to do, for example, 
opening a stupid bank account.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 050
Choose the Proper Sound 
to Alert Your Users.
The other day I was waiting for my turn in some ad-
ministration waiting room. I had a ticket with a nu-
mber on it. I had to wait for my number to appear on 
a screen. While I was waiting, I heard the phone ring 
every two minutes. Wow! They get many phone calls 
here was what I was thinking. Then, the receptionist 
called the numbers of people who didn’t notice that 
the number on the screen changed. Customers were 
a bit ashamed as the receptionist was crying out loud 
the customer number, with a bit of anger in her voice. 
It’s only after staying for a long time in that waiting 
room that I noticed that it wasn’t the phone that was 
ringing. But this phone ringing like sound was in fact 
the sound to announce that a new customer could 
come to the desk.
The problem was the sound of the alert. If it had 
not been like a telephone ringtone, more customers 
would have noticed that it was their turn. They 
would have felt less ashamed, and the staff member 
would have been less pissed.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 051
Always Look for the People 
Who Accompany Your Users.
Waiting in a shoe shop while my wife is shopping is 
like hell for me. There is no place where you can sit 
comfortably and wait for your wife to do her bu-
siness. No, you have to wait and stand in the middle 
of the store. Why is it like that? It’s like this, because 
most shops and services only focus their attention on 
the buyer. They don’t take into account that there are 
people who shop with the customer. The issue is not 
challenging to fix. Just put a few sofas, and I will be 
super happy. 
Always look for the people who come with your users 
or customers. If the shop took care of me, I would be 
more motivated to go out shopping with my wife. 
Now, it’s a painful memory. So, when my wife asks 
if we could go out shopping tonight, I’ll try to post-
pone the situation as far as possible. Which isn’t the 
dream scenario for the shoe shop.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 052
Help Me Remember My Room 
or Parking Number.
I had the chance to stay in a five-star hotel for my 
work. Such big hotels have many rooms and, there-
fore, long numbers for the rooms. The problem was 
that this number wasn’t written in my room card that 
opens the door. So, I had to make an effort to memo-
rize that number. But because I’m so bad with num-
bers, I also wrote a note on my phone with the room 
number. This prestigious hotel could have helped me 
with that. Of course, the simplest trick would have 
been to put the room number on my card. But there 
are other ways to solve this issue.
Parking areas around the world are an inspiration. 
Instead of using numbers for the floors, they use fun-
ny association that stick in your memory. So, for exa-
mple, you would park your car on the pink elephant 
floor. And the whole floor is painted in pink and has 
little elephant icons. That might be an inspiration for 
hotels too. And it’s also a great branding opportunity.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 053
Send Customers to 
Your Competitors.
A customer has some hesitations about a project that 
he wants to start with your company. You feel that 
you are not the best cultural fit for this project. Before 
accepting the project, recommend some of your com-
petitors to your potential customer. 
That seems stupid, but in fact, it’s something power-
ful. By doing so, you show that you care more about 
the project than about your money. It shows that 
you respect the work of others. But even stronger, it 
shows that you know your value. You aren’t afraid 
that your customers would choose someone else. If 
they do, it’s that the project wouldn’t have been great 
together. In the end, this attitude helps the customer 
to be sure about his decision to work with you.
People should not choose your company because 
they don’t know any other but because they want to 
work with you.
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 054
Allow What Your Competitors Don’t.
Services and businesses find it hard to stand out 
in today’s market. Of course, you can invest plenty 
of money into looking different. Of course, you can 
invest plenty of money in being more visible. Or you 
can just change the way people interact with your 
business in a super-cheap but impactful way. Allow 
what other forbid.
There is a bakery in Lausanne, Switzerland, with a 
sign saying: Picnic allowed. At first, you might think 
that this is completely stupid. Why would you allow 
people to eat things from other shops in your shop? 
The answer is in fact pretty straightforward. Your 
customers don’t careif they have bought that piece 
of chocolate in a first shop. Bought this croissant in 
second place. And bought this coffee in a third shop. 
They bought a breakfast. It happens that the diffe-
rent elements of this breakfast come from different 
shops. 
Often, when you allow people to do things that 
others forbid, you simplify the life of the customers. 
How Can You Make People Less Frustrated?
Principle 055
Frustrate Rude Customers.
Each service or shop attracts, at some moment, some 
rude customers. We all have experienced this si-
tuation where we are waiting in a queue and some 
asshole takes our spot. Many nice people don’t get 
angry and convince themselves that they are not so 
much in a hurry. Such a situation has a high potential 
for shop owners to improve their service. 
The shop owner or vendor can refuse to serve, at first, 
the rude customer who stole the spot. By frustrating 
the rude customer, the vendor shows respect for all 
other polite customers. Then, if the polite customer 
is in a gentle mood, the polite customer can offer his 
spot but isn’t forced to do it by the situation. 
Chapter 3
How to Find out If 
You Make People Feel 
like Shit?
 
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 056
Eat Your Own Shit.
Do you want to enhance the customer experience? 
There is one simple and tiny step you can do today. 
Be your own customer. After a while, most businesses 
don’t have any clue how it is to be in a relationship 
with them. They lose the empathy to see how it feels 
to collaborate with them.
The simple trick is to try out your own products and 
services. By experiencing your own service, you will 
already see tons of little things that you can improve. 
To get even more inspiration, you can use one other 
trick. Go out and experience a similar service or pro-
duct but from one of your competitors.
We should be like chefs. We should taste what 
we produce before giving it to our customers. We 
shouldn’t just build and ship.
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 057
Use the “Honestly, Would You 
Do That?” Test.
I’m astonished that when people try to have em-
pathy for their customers, they come up with such 
bad ideas. 
Of course, our customers would love to pay for that 
special insurance. Of course, our customers would 
hit that share button. Of course, they would love to 
share this amazing new hair dryer with their friends. 
Of course, users will take time to enter all personal 
information so that we can help them further. This 
is the moment when I love to let my cynical mind 
come out of my body. Yes, it sounds great, but now 
imagine, you are the customer, would you do that? 
Honestly? 
Don’t forget. You are often lazy. You usually don’t like 
to share personal information. You mostly only want 
to get something done. Your users and customers are 
exactly the same. Because they are humans too. So 
next time, ask yourself: “Honestly, would I really do 
that?”
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 058
Be Ready to Get Slapped by 
Your Customers If You Ask 
Them Feedback.
You should talk to your customers. This is something 
that any design or business professional will tell you 
today. And you should follow that advice. But there is 
one thing you should know before doing so.
If you talk to people, you must be prepared to hear 
what you don’t want to hear. They’ll tell you that the 
best idea you thought you had in the last ten years is 
just dumb. Talking to customers isn’t a beautiful love 
story. It’s more of a “love-hate” relationship.
If you are emotionally not ready for people to show 
you how stupid you are, don’t go out and ask your 
customer opinions. Just continue doing what you 
always do, but don’t complain that your customers 
don’t understand your product or service.
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 059
Great Ideas from Yesterday 
Might Suck Today.
Red lights are a great invention for the security of 
people crossing streets. We can say that it’s a great 
best practice for better security. But this best prac-
tice gets challenged as the culture evolves. With 
the mobile revolution people are using their smart-
phones all the time. They use their smartphone to 
get things done also while they are walking. The red 
lights that are placed on the eye height are not vi-
sible for these people. This creates a safety issue.
The city of Bodegraven, in the Netherlands, has taken 
this cultural shift and new danger into account. They 
put the traffic light on the pavement. By putting the 
red light on the ground, they hope that smartphone 
users will see it. 
What this story shows us is that we need to question 
our best practices from time to time. What worked 
well years ago may not be true anymore. Technology 
or culture might have changed how users live their 
lives. In such a context, it’s important to always go 
back in the field and question your assumption.
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 060
Test Your Service with Extreme 
Users Who Will Break Everything.
Perfect services that run smoothly without the staff 
having to help customers don’t exist. Your customers 
are humans, not robots. This means they will react 
in ways that you can’t even imagine. And in the end, 
they will break your service.
Prepare yourself for this by giving access to your 
service to users outside of your target group. These 
extreme users will bring a lot of questions. They will 
handle things the wrong way. This will show you 
where a creative human can make your system fail. 
Then, test your service with expert users. These are 
the users who will want to make the most of your 
product or service. They will hack it to fit their own 
working style. Are these hacks dangerous for your 
service? Then, prevent them. Are these hacks good 
for your service? Then, document them, because now 
these are new features for your power users.
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 061
Don’t Ask. Observe Behaviors.
Often, if you ask people about something, they try 
to come up with an answer that makes sense. But 
when you start observing people doing those things, 
you discover that thinking and doing are two sepa-
rate things. Knowing the opinion of your customers 
can be interesting to know their beliefs. But, usually, 
what you need to know is how people behave. Do 
they use the service? How? When?
In one of my research projects, I wanted to find out 
how homeless people used their money. The pro-
blem with such issues is that people usually forget 
how they use their money. People often tell you what 
they think you want to hear, because they want to be 
nice with you. Therefore, I photographed trash bins 
of a homeless shelter. What I found out is that home-
less people do not, as I expected, buy only inexpen-
sive food. They also buy stuff from expensive brands. 
For some homeless people, money is not the real is-
sue. The management of money is the bigger issue to 
solve. Observation of behaviors was here much more 
helpful than just asking people.
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 062
Don’t Ask for Feedback, 
Hunt for Feedback.
One day, I passed by a bus station. There, on the 
timetable, someone wrote a message. The message 
said: Why do you place the smelly trash right below 
the timetable? This was a valuable feedback, and 
nobody asked for it. 
Similar things happen on social media. People 
share their opinions without somebody asking for 
it. On open social networks, you can go hunting for 
feedback without having to ask people for it. You 
are looking for what people hate or love about your 
industry. To do that, search for sentences like “I hate 
my bank/lawyer/insurance/, etc.” Try to imagine how 
someone would complain naturally. Elements like “I 
hate,” “stupid,” and “the thing I hate the most about” 
are a few of thesentence that you can use to find 
valuable feedback.
This kind of feedback is not compromised by the 
way you are asking the question or by the fact that 
people want to please you. It’s blunt feedback that 
you can hunt.
How to Find out If You Make People Feel like Shit?
Principle 063
Do Not Send Surveys to 
a Small Team.
It’s interesting to see how workers in companies use 
surveys to know how their colleagues feel. We do 
that instead of having a real conversation, we ask for 
feedback in a bureaucratic way. By using surveys for 
small groups, we dehumanize the workplace a bit 
more. 
By sending a survey to a small team, you are basical-
ly telling your colleagues that you don’t care about 
them. It is as if you were telling them: “Please answer 
my exact questions. I’m not interested in the other 
stuff you might think and believe in.”
Instead of sending a survey, go and sit down with 
your teammates. Offer them a coffee, have a friendly 
conversation about the questions of your survey. You 
will see that your colleagues will share much more 
interesting information. And they’ll add information 
which you would never have thought of asking.
Chapter 4
How to Do Service 
Design Without a 
Budget for It?
 
 
Chapter 4
Big Problems Don’t 
Need Big Solutions.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 064
Adding More Resources Won’t 
Always Solve the Problem.
The American Economic Review shows that more 
resources don’t solve the problem. In a study, they 
found out that building extra roads does not reduce 
traffic congestion. Indeed, when there is access to 
more roads, the number of drivers tends to automa-
tically increase. In this example, adding more re-
sources didn’t fix the problem.
More isn’t always better. I think the example above 
can help us change our mindset. Next time a team-
mate tries to solve a problem by adding resources, 
ask yourself this: could this addition make things 
worse?
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 065
Forget Complex Technology, 
Just Use Some Stupid Paper.
I was in Beijing, China for work. It was late, and we 
were in the center of the city. The only open restau-
rant at this time was McDonald’s. How can you order 
your burger when you don’t speak any Chinese? If 
you are a technological believer, you would tell me: 
use Google Translate. Yeah, but no, I’m in China, 
Google is blocked. All my gear couldn’t help me buy a 
not so delicious burger. Once I arrived at the cashier, 
the staff member saw that I wasn’t so local and took 
out a paper with the visual menu. He gave me the 
paper, and with my fingers I just showed him what I 
wanted. 
We could not understand each other’s languages. The 
technology wasn’t of big help. But a stupid sheet of 
paper made it possible to buy the burger I wanted 
in the middle of Beijing at midnight. Think about 
that: Is there a simpler way of fixing your customer’s 
problems? Could you do it with paper or something 
low tech?
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 066
Save 2 Million with 
a Simple Checklist.
Central venous catheters often cause bloodstream 
infections. In the US alone, it has caused up to 
28,000 deaths per year. To fix this issue, Peter Prono-
vost created a simple five-step checklist for doctors. 
This smart guy also convinced the hospital board to 
let nurses stop doctors if they missed one step. By 
combining these two simple tricks, the results were 
enormous. In one hospital alone, the checklist had 
prevented 43 infections and eight deaths. Plus, it 
saved 2 million dollars.
The important point here is that the system worked 
because it was a combination of two simple tricks. 
First, quick to understand and actionable knowledge, 
that’s the checklist. Second, you also need to help 
people not to skip the steps. Before implementing 
this second step, one or more of the steps was skip-
ped. And this, for more than one third of all patients. 
If a checklist can help save lives, then why are you 
not using one with your employees?
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 067
Pets Can Help with Depression 
and Health.
Dana Casciotti and Diana Zuckerman of the National 
Center for Health Research found out an inexpensive 
trick to help patients with pain. In one of their stu-
dies, they found out that having your dog in the room 
lowers blood pressure. And this, better than taking 
a popular type of blood pressure medication. Also, 
the simple act of stroking a pet can help lower blood 
pressure and cholesterol.
The lesson to be learnt here is that the pain that a 
service produces can be lowered if we allow people 
to come with people, animals, or objects which reas-
sures them. This study also shows us that something 
super simple and inexpensive can have a big impact. 
Following such a study, we could, for example, create 
hospitals where pets are allowed.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 068
Reduce Cleaning Costs by Putting 
a Fly Sticker in the Urinal.
Asking men not to pee beside the urinal won’t help 
them better target where they pee. In toilets, you 
sometimes see posters saying: “My dear men, please 
seat to pee, it’s less work to clean up after.” This 
educational strategy would have a great effect if guys 
didn’t look at it like an attack on their manhood. 
There is a trick which doesn’t need a special educa-
tion program for men or any signs. Just put a sticker 
showing a fly in the urinal or toilet. By doing so, men 
will target the sticker with their pee shot. This strate-
gy, which sounds funny, really works. Places like the 
Amsterdam Airport have introduced this trick. They 
claim that they reduced spillage between 50% and 
80%. This reduction resulted in a saving of 8% of the 
total budget for cleaning their toilets.
What this example teaches us is that sometimes a bit 
of fun works way better.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 069
Beauty Reduces Pain.
In a paper published in the “Consciousness and Co-
gnition” Journal, three researchers studied the effect 
of art on the perception of pain. The view of pain-
tings, which patients described as beautiful, helped 
reduce pain. A nice piece of art makes the pain sen-
sation softer for the patient. 
For us, as business owners or Service Designers, 
this research tells us two major things. First, for the 
health sector, we can help handle pain in super 
inexpensive ways. The second, and more important 
insight, is that beauty matters a lot in the experience 
of a service. Usually, for the design of services or 
products, we go for the standard look. We look for the 
practical and don’t care for the beautiful stuff. What 
this research shows is that beauty has a huge in-
fluence on the customer experience. Bringing beauty 
back to your products or services will make these 
services less painful for your customers.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 070
A Good Sticker Can Reduce 
Thefts by 62%.
Three researchers at Newcastle University did an ex-
periment about bike thefts. They displayed an image 
of eyes with a message about being watched. Bicycle 
thefts decreased by 62% at the experimental loca-
tions. These guys reduced bicycle thefts with a really 
ugly and cheap sign. These guys didn’t do anything 
else. No security guards. No cameras or special elec-
tronics. No special education or prevention programs. 
No. Just a damn stupid sign that says “Cycles thieves 
we are watching you” and two eyes looking. What’s 
even more astonishing here is that the results are 
not over a short period. These guys made their little 
experiment over a full year. 
Next time you have a big problem to solve, try to 
think about the stupid little things you could do to 
improve the situation. Go out, test them. This will 
cost you less money than setting up some complex 
technology. And the results might astonishyou.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 071
Candies Make People Smarter.
A study by psychologist Alice Isen shows the power 
of simple candies. Doctors who received candies 
were far more likely to diagnose the patient’s pro-
blem correctly. Alice Isen explains: “When people 
feel happy, they have better access to more varied 
material in their memory. They are more creative 
problem solvers because their minds are more ’alive,’ 
and they are less easily confused.” 
Even simple things like offering candies have an 
influence. For service designers, this means that we 
should build a positive and joyful atmosphere both 
in the workplace and in our services. That is an easy 
way to improve the decision-making of people. 
Chapter 4
Be Lazy and Don’t 
Reinvent the Wheel.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 072
Keep It Simple Stupid.
The K.I.S.S. acronym stands for “Keep It Simple Stu-
pid.” The US Navy invented this design principle in 
1960. The idea of the Navy was that systems work 
best if we keep them simple rather than making 
them complicated. This principle helped engineers 
build spy planes. But we can use this principle for 
the creation of services too. 
If you build a simple service, it’s logical that people 
will spend less time figuring how it works. If things 
are built with simplicity in mind, they are simple 
to understand for the users. This clarity will, in the 
end, make people stick with your product. And this, 
because, usually, competition will be much more 
complex.
Simple services or products will be easier to build, 
this means you can adapt yourself faster than your 
competitors. This is important for startups or bu-
sinesses in highly competitive fields of activities. 
Your infrastructure will be easier to change or adapt.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 073
When You Add This, Remove That.
Innovative businesses love to bring new ideas and 
features in their products and services. But, there is a 
well-known problem. They have a limited set of time 
to run the service. As we add new features or ideas to 
our services, we also end up lowering our available 
time. That’s why I suggest the following principle: 
“Always ensure you remove at least as much as you 
create.”
Before you put something new in place, make a list of 
all the tasks you already have to do. Make the same 
for all the service features. List the one which you 
can remove, simplify, or delegate so as to create time 
for the new ideas or features. You can, for example, 
delegate parts of your service to your competitors. 
Instead of doing everything as before, you could 
remove one part to create space for a new feature in 
your service. 
This exercise of eliminating, simplifying and dele-
gating could also be a monthly routine. But to make 
such exercises work, the rule has to be clear. If you go 
through your task list or service features and do not 
find anything to remove, simplify, or delegate, you 
are lying.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 074
It’s Okay If Your Website Looks 
like Every Other Website.
The guys at Google are pretty good at understanding 
how people use technology and how they react to it. 
In one of their studies, they tried to see what type of 
website people prefer. Boring or fancy-looking we-
bsites. Unique or similar designs. The result of their 
research is pretty clear: Users strongly prefer website 
designs that look both simple and familiar.
What this study tells us is that people are okay with 
websites that look similar to another. Websites that 
use similar designs help users navigate and unders-
tand them quicker. As the Google team says, designs 
that contradict what users typically expect of a web-
site may hurt users’ first impression. 
And this could damage their expectations and frus-
trate them.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 075
Don’t Build Custom Software 
for Your Business.
You have an idea for a new software that would en-
hance productivity. That sounds great and exciting. 
But you shouldn’t follow your instinct on this parti-
cular point. 
If you had the idea, somebody else had it too. 
Somewhere in the world, someone skilled might 
have had the same problem. And maybe already sol-
ved it. You only have to invest a bit of time in a good 
Google search session. So, don’t start by writing the 
briefing for the developers, search first. 
Usually, when people come to me saying they need a 
new tool, I can find an existing alternative. The exis-
ting alternative is often cheap. Plus, the alternative is 
much more powerful than what the company could 
afford if they were to build the software themselves. 
By using existing software, you can use plenty of 
existing features and only develop what is so special 
to you.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 076
Let Employees Use Their Own Apps
Shadow IT is the usage of IT systems without expli-
cit approval from the company. Employees don’t go 
through corporate apps but use other apps that they 
find easier to use. Shadow IT is something that we 
should look with a more empathic eye. Your staff 
uses Dropbox instead of your super crazy sharing tool 
developed by your IT? It’s usually because the sys-
tem that your IT produced sucks. 
Why should you pay to develop apps when your em-
ployees already use other ones for free? Why should 
you build new tools if the ones they already own 
satisfy them? When your staff uses non-corporate 
apps, it can also be a sign that they need some trai-
ning. Use the apps they already use as a reference in 
your courses. It will help your staff learn the corpo-
rate tools quicker.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 077
Print in Black and White.
I’ve worked for a local NGO for several years. During 
my time there, we were looking at ways to save mo-
ney on bureaucratic stuff. In our exploration to re-
duce expenses, we analyzed something super simple. 
We looked at the printing costs. Printing all marke-
ting material in black and white would save several 
hundred to thousand bucks in only one year. Several 
thousand bucks per year is a big deal for a local NGO. 
You might say that you need to print in colors to 
show the emotions. I get that. There is a little sen-
tence you can add on your printing material that will 
fix this. “Printing this flyer in black and white made 
us save money that we used to fund our homeless 
program.”
Chapter 4
Don’t Solve the Problem, 
Fix the Perception.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 078
People Don’t Know That You Are 
Doing a Great Job.
In Great Britain, the post office works well. They 
have a 98% success rate at delivering first-class mail 
the next day. That is really good. It seems that the 
Post-office organization wanted to do even better. 
They wanted to arrive at a 99% success rate. To reach 
that extra 1%, they needed enormous investments. 
They almost broke the organization. There is so-
mething else interesting in this little story from Rory 
Sutherland. When you asked users, their perception 
of the Post-office was much worse. Most people rated 
the success rate around 50% to 60%.
What is true for the U.K. Post-office is right for many 
businesses. Customers don’t know that your organi-
zation does such a good job. In such cases, is it better 
to work on making the service even better or should 
you make the service feel better? If we are honest, 
your service might be already good enough. So ,you 
should rather work on the user perception.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 079
You Will Be Seen as a Better Service 
If You Do Only One Thing.
Rory Sutherland explains key findings in Behavio-
ral Economics in a simple way. Here is what he says 
about a complex paper by psychologist Ayelet Fish-
bach: “People believe somethingthat only does one 
thing is better at that thing than something that does 
that thing and something else. It’s an innate thing 
called goal dilution.” What is interesting here for 
business owners is the notion of focus. In a way, our 
brain doesn’t like multifunctional services or pro-
ducts. 
Our brain says: “Hmmm if it does all that, it’s certain-
ly because it doesn’t do anything right.” The brain 
loves focus. Then, why do we lose so much time ad-
ding features after features in products? Why do we 
lose time adding more options in the services that 
we build?
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 080
Good Design Helps You Sell Things 
for Twice the Usual Price.
In a study by BioMed Central, four researchers tested 
the reactions of people to the design of salads. Yes, 
salads. Stay with me, because the findings are extre-
mely interesting: People would rate a salad presented 
artistically as tastier than the same salad without 
this fancy look and no new ingredients. Furthermore, 
customers would be willing to pay twice as much for 
the fancy designed salad.
You know now that people are okay to pay twice the 
usual price for something that is better designed. 
When you have that data, business leaders start to 
see good design as an investment. They see it as an 
investment with a high return on investment.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 081
One Wow Effect Is Enough.
When you build a service or a product, you always try 
to put in place something exciting in it. Something 
which goes beyond the standard feature. Something 
special. That’s the WOW effect. But as a creator, you 
are often heavily attracted by those WOW effects. 
You think, we could do this, and this, and that. That 
would be amazing, but it isn’t needed. Having one 
special feature is enough. If everything you do is 
special, people will feel lost. In the end, they will feel 
overwhelmed. You need to allow people to feel se-
cure, feel that they know how things work. And then, 
once in a while, surprise them with this WOW effect 
or feature. 
So, the next time you are brainstorming about what 
will make your service so special, select only one 
WOW effect.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 082
Do Small Updates and 
Sell Revolutions.
Apple has a fun way to sell updates as revolutions. 
They call each of their product a revolution. They tell 
you that it’s all new and shiny. But in fact, the core, 
the process of using it is still the same. The form of 
the iPhone, for example, is quite similar to the first 
version. If you knew how to use the first version of 
Mac OS X, you can use the newest version without 
being lost. Can we say that of Windows? No. It’s why 
people hated Windows Vista and 8. Both of these 
version were revolution updates. People hated them. 
When Windows 7 came after Windows Vista, it was 
well-received. It was a discrete update based on Vis-
ta. People loved it. 
People love change but hate to learn new habits. This 
means that they want to hear that everything is new 
and fancy. They only can work with something that 
is only optimized and not revolutionized.
For the next update of your product or service, sell a 
revolution and do an iteration. People will love it.
How to Do Service Design Without a Budget for It?
Principle 083
A Swimsuit Can Make Your 
Event Different.
Hackathons are tech events that are usually seen 
as something for guys rather than girls. The people 
behind Hack Away, a hackathon in Stockholm, used 
a simple trick to get a more diverse audience. With 
some good texts and one good image, they were able 
to have 50% of the attendees that are female. 
Instead of using terms that spoke only to hardcore 
developers, they talked more about adventure and 
creativity. But the one thing that they did that is 
especially smart was to put a bikini on their main 
photo on their website. With the bikini as their hero 
image, the organizers clearly showed that girls are 
welcome. One attendee even told them that the sole 
reason why she applied was the picture of the swim-
suit. 
What would be the bikini photo that can change 
your company or service?
Chapter 5
How to Use 
Psychology to Improve 
Your Service?
 
Chapter 5
How to Build Trust?
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 084
You Are a Liar, so Let Me Ask 
Other Customers.
When service staff wants to show the power of a ser-
vice to a user, it’s normal that users think “This guy is 
paid to lie to me.” So, why do you bother trying super 
hard to convince your user when he might just see 
you as a paying liar? What I recommend is to search 
around and find the communities that are active 
in your segment. It might be some forums, WeChat 
groups, or a conversation on Quora. 
When you are telling your future customers that you 
are awesome, let them know that they can check if 
this is true by themselves. Show them the different 
community platforms that talk about your service. 
Let them know that you have no control on these 
sites. Tell your future customers to go on these web-
sites and ask others how we are.
But many of the customers will not even bother to 
ask the question. They will see that you are confident 
enough in the service you provide.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 085
You Need 10 Reviews to Build Trust.
Airbnb is a great example of how you can build trust 
with simple design elements. The whole review sys-
tem that they created helps new customers come out 
of the idea “It’s weird to go to a stranger home.” They 
do that just by showing you that other people did 
have a good experience. We would think the more 
reviews you have, the bigger the trust is. A study 
from Airbnb with Stanford University shows how the 
reality works: “If you’ve got less than three reviews, 
nothing changes. But if you’ve got more than 10, eve-
rything changes.” 
To build trust, there is a minimal set of elements nee-
ded. Once you reach them, trust can exist. You don’t 
need to work more and more and more on it.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 086
Sharing Your Bias Builds Trust.
We often believe that sharing with customers how 
certain biases affect us makes us look weak. And that 
this will lower trust. Research from the US National 
Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health 
shows us the opposite. 
Their research focused on doctors and shows the im-
pact that bias disclosure has. In the medical world, 
doctors often recommend the treatment they spe-
cialize in. For example, surgeons recommend surge-
ry more often than doctors. The research looked at 
what happened when the doctor said that he had a 
speciality bias. What happened is that more patients 
choose the recommended treatment. Even more pa-
tients follow the recommendations with a little more 
transparency. The doctor just had to give the possibi-
lity of seeing another specialist to the patient.
Letting people look at different perspectives does 
not weaken your position. Letting people know that 
you have a bias doesn’t lower the trust. No, it seems 
to create a stronger sense of trust in the user mind.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 087
Use the IKEA Effect to Make Your 
Users Proud.
In 1950, cake mixes were invented. Buyers could 
bake a cake quickly at home with these premade 
mixes. But at first, they failed. Consumers didn’t like 
the instant mixes, as they made cooking “too easy.” 
After finding this out, the makers of the cake mixes 
added an extra step. Consumers now had to break an 
egg and add it to the mix. A service or product that 
makes a task too easy can undervalue the skills of a 
person. It goes against common beliefs, but a service 
or product can be too easy to use!
Three researchers, Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, 
and Dan Ariely, named and described this bias as the 
IKEA effect in 2011.They explain it like this:
Labor alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking 
for the fruits of one’s labor: even constructing a stan-
dardized bureau, an arduous, solitary task, can lead 
people to overvalue their (often poorly constructed) 
creations.
Chapter 5
How to Help People 
Change Behavior?
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 088
Offer Less Choices to Improve 
Customer Experience.
We all learned that customers like more choice. 
That’s a rule that is deeply embedded in our minds 
and culture. We associate the fact of having more op-
tions, more choices to freedom. Somebody smart did 
a study about this. Meet Professor Sheena Iyengar. 
What this researcher did was to test the efficiency of 
showcasing 24 flavors of jam versus 6 options. When 
there were only 6 jam options, the sale rate was 30%. 
When there were 24 flavors, the sale rate was 3%. 
Less choice created more sales. 
Before you add more choice and options in your 
service, test out the effect it has on your sales. And go 
even further, test out if it makes your customer really 
more satisfied.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 089
90% of Your Website Content 
Is Useless.
Author Gerry McGovern collected a few examples 
that show that less content means more conversion. 
Telenor of Norway, a big telecom company, deleted 
almost 90% of their pages. Conversions went up by 
100%. But more interesting, support requests went 
down by 35%. Is this specific for the telecom in-
dustry? No. The US Department of Health deleted 
150,000 of their 200,000 pages. And you know what? 
Nobody noticed. 
What is true for the telecom and health industry is 
also true for schools and the state. The Columbia 
University of Chicago deleted 97% of their pages. Stu-
dent application inquiries went up by 80%. Liverpool 
City went from 4000 pages to 700 on their website. 
Support requests went down, and online reporting 
went up.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 090
Focus on Smaller Short-Term Goals 
to Change Behaviors.
Temporal discounting is a theory from Behavioral 
Economics. It is the fact that a person puts more 
value on what is available right now rather than in 
a more distant and future goal. In practice, it means 
that people get unmotivated by the big goal if they 
don’t see an effect immediately. 
Let’s take the example of a banking service that 
helps you make more savings. Instead of giving a 
yearly review of the savings the user made with your 
service, show the impact already in the first week. 
For the creation of new services and habits, temporal 
discounting has a huge effect. It is important that we 
make the impact of the services that customers use 
visible right now. Users need an immediate feed-
back that shows them that the service is valuable for 
them.
To keep users involved in the usage of the service, it’s 
better to have smaller immediate goals.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 091
To Get People to Act, Show 
the Losses Instead of the Wins.
Researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman 
demonstrated that humans have a loss aversion bias. 
This bias pushes people to prefer to avoid losses than 
to get an equal gain. Studies tend to show that losses 
are twice as powerful than gains from a psychologi-
cal point of view.
What does this mean for services and products? 
Let’s take the example of a service that helps cus-
tomers save money. Let’s imagine that you are selling 
eco-friendly and energy saving lamps. With these 
lights, a customer can save up to 350 dollars per year. 
That is how you would usually frame the benefit of 
your users. Now, if we take into account loss aversion, 
we should flip the framing. If you don’t use the lamps 
from our subscription service, you will lose 350 dol-
lars per year. Now, people will feel your message be 
as two times more powerful than the first one.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 092
Reduce Missed Appointments with 
a Simple Stupid Sentence.
Missed appointments are painful both for the user 
and the service provider. Using a sentence like “80% 
of patients arrive on time, be one of them” reduces 
no shows by 32%. A study by Martin, Bassi, and 
Dunbar-Rees showed this effect. These researchers 
explain that the social norm is powerful to motivate 
your users. In a certain way, as humans, we want to 
stick with the crowd. If the facts show me that most 
of my other human companions do something right, 
then I’ll try to do it right too.
This type of little nudge can be even more efficient 
when you combine it with classical systems. I’m 
thinking of a reminder card, with the date of the cus-
tomer appointment written on it, that they can stick 
on their fridge. Or little reminders via text messages. 
These are all inexpensive methods to avoid the pain 
of a missed appointment.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 093
Ask People to Name When and 
Where They Will Perform a New Habit.
A study published in the American Psychologist 
looked at two different groups of people who wanted 
to do more exercise. In the first group, they asked 
participants when and where they would perform 
this new habit. The second group just went out wit-
hout further question. Participants who were asked 
these two questions had more chance to integrate 
the new habit. 
When we want to help users to create a new habit, 
we can ask them more questions about the context 
of this practice. We can ask questions like the fol-
lowing: When would you do it? Where would you 
do it? Will you do it alone or with someone? How 
long do you think it will take you? These stupid and 
straightforward questions help the user imagine 
himself in the future situation. By doing that, we en-
hance his chance to integrate this new healthy habit 
in his life.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 094
Don’t Motivate People with Money.
Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics, 
shared an experiment in his book Predictably Irra-
tional. A program manager of a nursing home wanted 
lawyers to give legal services to its residents. The 
residents couldn’t afford to pay the full price of a 
lawyer. The lawyers were asked to donate their time 
for a good cause in two different ways. One way of-
fered a small compensation of $30 per hour and the 
other didn’t. You might think, lawyers are greedy and 
attracted to money. No. Lawyers were more attracted 
to volunteer for free than for a small benefit. 
Once you put money in the game, people start to act 
in the “market norms.” They are thinking: Is what I 
get enough for what I do? Instead, if there is no mo-
ney in the game, then people use the “social norms” 
to define if they should do something or not.
To motivate people; social factors are more important 
than the simple monetary aspects.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 095
95% of People Stick 
to the Default Option.
There is plenty of research that tends to prove that 
we are lazy and stick to the default options. 
The first study is from the Research team at Mi-
crosoft. They investigated how many Word users 
changed the settings of the program. More than 95% 
had kept the settings in the exact configuration that 
the program was installed in. 
We can use this human laziness to do good. Coun-
tries that have as default that people agree to donate 
their organs have a consent rate up to 99%. For ano-
ther country with a similar cultural background but 
which didn’t put it as a default, the consent rate was 
4.25%. 
So, here come two big questions. How can you create 
default options that enhance the lives of your users 
and customers? Why do you need so many options if 
most of your users will stick with the default one?
Chapter 5
How to Use Rhythm to 
Create Better Services?
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 096
Under Promise,over Deliver.
It’s always a pleasant surprise when a package ar-
rives a bit sooner than you expected. You get even 
more excited about the content you just received. 
It’s also great when there is an extra gift in what you 
bought online. We all love when a partner goes the 
extra mile than what you had planned. All these si-
tuations make people happy. That’s why you should 
create such conditions from the start. 
For typical vendors, I would say: talk less, do more. 
If you know that you can deliver work in two days, 
then promise three days. If you do everything right, 
you create a day of happiness for you and the cus-
tomer. If things go wrong, and you need a bit of extra 
time, then the customer won’t notice it. This can 
work for any service or product. The product promise 
should always be a bit smaller than the real outcome.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 097
Start with the Boring Stuff 
Then Excite Me Little by Little.
My wife and I went to Berlin. There, we visited many 
museums. Two were very interesting. The Spy Mu-
seum seemed like a wonderful and exciting place. 
We were really motivated to see that one. The second 
was the Sea Life Museum. Basically, only aquariums. 
The advertising about it wasn’t that exciting. 
The Spy Museum started with the best elements. 
And some more boring parts came in the middle. 
So, in the end, there was no “aha” moment, as this 
one already happened at the beginning. The second 
museum started with the most boring elements and 
then built on that. Every 20 meters, there was a new 
little thing. And as we were bored before, even a 
slightly bigger aquarium with a changing light was 
already much more interactive.
When you build a service, start with some more 
boring stuff. Then, when you add a few sparkles, the 
user experiences become a firework.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 098
Always End a Service with 
a High Peak.
What we remember of an experience is not the me-
dian of the experience. The memory of an experience 
is made of two things. First, the peak of the expe-
rience—the best or worst moment. The second aspect 
is how people felt when the experience ended. That’s 
what we call the Peak-end rule. 
Researchers Redelmeier and Kahneman studied two 
groups of patients who had to go through a colo-
noscopy. One group had a standard procedure. The 
second group had a longer procedure. But in the last 
few minutes, the doctor didn’t perform the procedure 
but just waited. The group who had a longer colo-
noscopy remembered the experience as less painful. 
And this, because the last minutes were not painful. 
That’s why we should think about how we let our 
customers leave our stores. We should design the 
best “thank you” page for the forms of our websites. 
Design the best unsubscribe pages for newsletters. 
Because this will be a huge part of how people will 
remember your business, product, or service.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 099
Uncertainty Makes Users Safer.
All around the world, cities are doing what most of us 
would think is stupid. They are removing road mar-
kings. They are removing traffic lights. This seems 
dangerous, but in fact, it creates safer roads.
The Yorkshire town in England suffered a failure of 
42 traffic lights. What was amazing is that without 
the traffic lights, traffic moved more smoothly.
In the city of Somerset, they tracked the impact of 
removing the traffic lights. After removing the traffic 
lights, there was a 50% improvement in traffic flow. 
And in fact, this is nothing new. Already in the 1990s, 
a Dutch engineer Hans Monderman put that thinking 
into practice. 
As service owners or creators, we believe that it is our 
job to create a secure and safe environment for our 
users. But by doing so, we might create a perceived 
sense of safety which will lead people to be less 
careful. In fact, uncertainty makes users safe. When 
feeling uncertain, users look around and don’t be-
lieve everything is okay.
How to Use Psychology to Improve Your Service?
Principle 100
Friction Can Help People 
to Be Less Stupid.
The social network Nextdoor had a big problem with 
racist behavior. Users reported suspicious people 
based mostly on the color of their skin. The company 
was able to reduce the number of these racist posts 
by 75% with two simple tricks. 
The first addition was a little message when 
someone reported some suspicious behavior. “Ask 
yourself: Is what I saw actually suspicious, especially 
if I take race or ethnicity out of the equation?” This 
works for people who didn’t intend to send some ra-
cist message. These people weren’t really racist, but 
they didn’t think about they just wrote. The second 
element they used was a little form. When a mes-
sage had a mention of race, the user had to add extra 
information. By doing so, they reduced racist posts 
by 50%. 
By making it a bit longer to be racist, all the lazy ra-
cist guys will just give up.
Thanks
This book was mainly made possible through the 
amazing support of my wonderful wife Joëlle. 
A big thank you also to three crazy people who 
helped me prototype this book—Loris Olivier, Romain 
Pittet, and Pascal Wicht.
Typeface
Phily Grotesk & Lemanic by Loris Olivier.
Proofreading
Papertrue, London
Publishing and printing
Blurb
Publication
This handbook was first published in December 
2018 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-
Commercial 4.0 International license. So, feel free to 
hack the content that you find here.
About this book
The hypothesis of this handbook is that 
you don’t need to understand the full 
extent of Service Design to improve the 
user and customer experience. You don’t 
need to understand all the theory to create 
great services.
That’s why each principle in this 
handbook is summarized in a simple rule 
of thumb. These simple rules of thumb 
should be enough for smart readers. You 
might find, under each principle, a little 
story, an example, or a study. This additio-
nal content can help you turn this prin-
ciple into action.