Human-Centered Service Design

Stop inviting clients to shop your offer around. Big branding client. Discovery call. They're excited. Then I show them 3 options. Not one. Three. "Why would you give us choices?" they ask. "Doesn't that complicate things?" Actually, it simplifies everything. Here's what 30 years of running two 7-figure businesses taught me about options: • Option 1: DIY (10% price) Digital course. Templates. Self-paced. For those who aren't ready to invest yet. Infinitely scalable. Zero touch from you. They get value. You get a customer. • Option 2: DWY - Done With You (x price) Finite deliverables. Some customization. You do the work together. Sweet spot for most buyers. • Option 3: DFY - Done For You (10x price) White glove. Bespoke. Custom everything. Training, coaching, custom software if needed. You handle it all. They write the check. The magic isn't in the options. It's in what happens next. When you present one option, they think: "Should I buy this or not?" Binary decision. Easy to say no. When you present three options, they think: "Which one should I buy?" The conversation shifts from IF to WHICH. Psychology 101: People hate missing out more than they love getting a deal. Give them one option? They'll shop around. Give them three? They'll shop your menu. Your 10% option captures future buyers. Your 10x option makes your middle option look reasonable. Your middle option? That's where 80% of sales happen. Price anchoring and why it works. But here's what most people miss: Each option must solve the same problem. Just at different levels of involvement. Not different services. Different depths of the same service. What three options could you offer today? Have you tried options in your offer? What happened? Drop a comment below and share your story. Small Business Builders #pricingstrategy #salesstrategy #businessgrowth

Neurodiversity and UX (https://lnkd.in/emrD2Amc), with practical guidelines, tools and resources to understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism and ADHD. Kindly shared by Stéphanie Walter. In the design process, neurodiversity often gets overlooked. It’s often seen as an exception to the rule, an outlier, an edge case — and as such, considered separately, usually late, and typically only if there is enough time. After all, it doesn’t fit common user journeys and flows for our products or services. But people aren’t edge cases. Every person is just a different person. We all might have similar tasks and fit in the same user journey maps, but we might perform these tasks very differently — and over time, we meticulously adjust those journeys to be more efficient, or more error-prone. As a designer, I often see myself as a path-maker. I’m designing reliable paths for people to navigate to their goals comfortably. Without being blocked. Or confused. Or locked out. That means respecting the simple fact that people’s needs, tasks and user journeys are all different, and that they evolve over time. And: most importantly, it means considering them very early in the process. Better accessibility is better for everyone. Instead of making decisions that need to be reverted or refined to be compliant, we can bring a diverse group of people — with accessibility needs, with neurodiversity, frequent and infrequent users, experts, newcomers — in the process, and design with them, rather than for them. ✤ Accessibility and Neurodiversity I've been putting together a few summaries and bookmarks on inclusive design, and you might find them helpful: ADHD: https://lnkd.in/eUk5PyQs Alzheimer: https://lnkd.in/evHj7jZ9 Autism: https://lnkd.in/eHqG4VhU Children: https://lnkd.in/emYzXPZm Colorblindness: https://lnkd.in/eqjvPgSZ Deafness: https://lnkd.in/epeRUMmc Dementia: https://lnkd.in/ewWj4Dpw Dyscalculia: https://lnkd.in/e8wyMWp4 Dyslexia: https://lnkd.in/ei9mncR7 Legibility: https://lnkd.in/eEarXzD8 Left-Handed Users: https://lnkd.in/eWyzRdy5 Mental Health: https://lnkd.in/eEaXjs9x Older Adults: https://lnkd.in/e54f2FT2 Screen readers: https://lnkd.in/eaviMFkf Stress: https://lnkd.in/ew_65Km4 Teenagers: https://lnkd.in/et3XbUTJ Trauma: https://lnkd.in/eVfS-meA 🍱 Neurodiversity Design System, by Will Soward https://lnkd.in/edBzmUT8 And a HUGE thank-you to everyone who has been writing, speaking and sharing articles, resources and toolkits on neurodiversity. The topic is often forgotten and overlooked, but has an incredible impact and to some people makes a world of a difference. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 #ux #design

For decades, value-based care has rested on a simple premise: Manage the sickest patients better and reduce total cost of care. And, yet, most of the innovation we’ve seen hasn’t actually focused on the sickest patients. Instead, it’s centered on high-volume, moderately expensive chronic diseases like congestive heart failure, diabetes, and COPD. These programs—important as they are—tend to “peanut-butter” moderate-intensity interventions across thousands of people. The result? incremental improvements across large populations and modest overall savings. But here’s a big opportunity we’ve been missing: Better care for patients with ultra-high-cost, low-frequency catastrophic illness. Think about individuals with advanced neurologic disease, progressive respiratory failure, or complex transplant histories. They may represent less than 1% of a population, yet drive a much larger percentage of total costs. This is where the next frontier of value-based care may lie. Not in broad, one-size-fits-all disease management. But in radically individualized care models built for the “long tail” of clinical complexity. This will require: new care operating systems; multidisciplinary specialty models; better home-based support; and payment reform that recognizes extreme acuity and replaces generic protocols with bespoke individualized models. Done right, this could be clinically and financially transformative. We often say value-based care should prioritize “the sickest of the sick.” It’s time we actually did. The next decade will be defined not by how we manage the average patient—but by how we serve the most complex ones.

Long ago in Delhi, a British officer put up a sign: “WE PAY FOR EVERY DEAD COBRA.” Soon, people lined up with snakes. Then something unexpected happened, they started breeding cobras to earn more money. When the plan was stopped, the breeders released their snakes. The result? Even more cobras than before. In hospitality, the same principle applies. Imagine a hotel rewarding staff for every positive guest review. At first, it seems smart but soon, some team members focus only on getting reviews, encouraging guests to leave quick feedback rather than delivering genuinely thoughtful service. When the incentive is removed, the focus on authentic service has diminished, and overall guest satisfaction may drop. The lesson: short-term incentives can backfire. Building a culture of genuine service, long-term habits, and intrinsic motivation creates results that last without “breeding more cobras.”

It deeply saddens me to see lives being put at risk just to meet a 10-minute delivery promise. We need to rethink ultra-fast deliveries. No product is so urgent that it justifies endangering someone's life. If it truly were that important, quick commerce would have become mainstream in India much earlier. Quick commerce has revolutionized convenience—same-day delivery is a remarkable achievement. But this 10-minute delivery race is not what we need. It leads to unsafe driving behavior—over speeding, wrong-side driving—all in a bid to meet unrealistic timelines. My humble suggestions to all quick commerce companies: Extend delivery times to at least 30 minutes to 1 hour. Assign multiple deliveries in the same area to a single rider. This approach reduces time pressure and allows delivery partners to earn more per trip. Offer better compensation to delivery partners per order. Introduce a fair delivery charge for customers—convenience has a cost. If someone still wants a 10-minute delivery, let them pay extra, and ensure that the ride is insured and safe for the rider. Let's not prioritize convenience over someone's life. Every delivery rider is a human—someone's son, brother, or friend. It's time to say NO to 10-minute deliveries. #QuickCommerce #RiderSafety #GigWorkers #EmpathyMatters #ResponsibleBusiness #LifeOverLogistics

Most outsiders (and many insiders) oversimplify healthcare, leading to silly ideas like AI replacing doctors or clinicians being interchangeable. To effectively design healthcare and apply technology, we must understand the nature of the problems we are solving. As Richard Bohmer explained in his outstanding 2009 book Designing Care, there are three broad types of problems (see figure): 1️⃣ 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 are well-defined, easily recognized, and solvable using proven steps (protocols). We know a lot about structured problems and how to solve them. Examples include uncomplicated UTIs and acute cholecystitis. We test to confirm causes. We treat by executing a known solution. We can manage patients with the same problem similarly. 2️⃣ 𝐔𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 are poorly defined, hard to recognize, and lack a known solution in advance. We know much less about these problems. Examples include severe depression and penetrating Crohn’s disease. We perform tests to refine hypotheses. Using experience and tacit knowledge, we work to solve these problems using iterative processes customized to individual patients. 3️⃣ 𝐒𝐞𝐦𝐢-𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 sit in between. We know a bit about these problems, but they may manifest differently. An example is a patient with Von Willebrand disease and Factor 5 Leiden deficiency. Why does this matter? 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 can be solved by less experienced clinicians (including NPs and PAs) using well-defined pathways and clinical decision support. When people imagine AI making diagnoses and outlining treatments they are thinking of structured problems (whether they know it or not!). Conversely, 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬 require more experienced clinicians (sometimes multidisciplinary teams) who rely on intuition and experience, not predefined protocols. Here, decision support and AI may help clinicians recognize patterns, but these problems are too far “off the grid” to simply compute. (This surprises many technologists). We can design better care by considering these fundamental – yet rarely discussed – principles.

🧠💺 When innovation meets empathy, the future becomes more human. As someone who’s spent decades helping companies integrate AI and automation, I’m always moved when I see technology that serves people—not the other way around. Take this: Standing Ovation. A standing desk aid—born not from corporate labs, but from Peter Lammer’s personal resilience after a life-changing motorcycle accident. Instead of accepting limitations, he designed a C-shaped seat on a rail system—freeing the hands, easing leg and back pain, and empowering people with lower limb disabilities to stand, move, and work with dignity. This isn’t just ergonomic. It’s deeply human-centered innovation. We often talk about “efficiency” in tech. But what about accessibility, purpose, and resilience? That’s the mindset we champion in the IRREPLACEABLE movement. Because thriving in the AI era isn’t just about knowing how to use tools—it’s about staying human while doing it. 👉 Discover the Three Competencies of the Future. Work with tech, not for it. https://zurl.co/C39b #IRREPLACEABLE #HumanCenteredTech #InclusiveDesign #FutureOfWork #Innovation #Ergonomics #WorkplaceWellness #AIWithPurpose

When I worked in hotels, I quickly learned that when a guest was truly upset, level 10 mad, about something seemingly small (no lounge chair at the pool, no ocean-view table, no room left in a snorkeling lesson), it was never just about that one thing. I called it the three-door rule: 🚪 Door One: The immediate complaint. The thing they’re upset about right now. 🚪 Door Two: The earlier disruption. Maybe their flight was delayed, their luggage got lost, or their room wasn’t ready when they arrived. 🚪 Door Three: The real reason. The thing that started the downward spiral. Maybe they’ve been stressed for weeks. Maybe this trip was supposed to be perfect, and nothing has gone right. Here’s the key, if you truly listen, empathize, and do everything in your power to help them, Doors Two and Three start to fade away. Their frustration isn’t just about the lounge chair, it’s about feeling unseen, unheard, or like their vacation (or moment) is slipping away. Exceptional customer service, in any industry—is about being committed to unpacking the real issue. If you can do that, you’re not just solving a problem; you’re turning a bad experience into a great one.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗥𝗕𝗣 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝗜𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗜𝘁 Almost 8 years ago, I sat across the table from a senior leader of a global firm, interviewing for the Head of HR role. The discussion veered toward the future of HR.  I laid out my vision: 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 #HRBP 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹.  It had become a process-heavy, compliance-first function, losing sight of what truly matters - #people and #business impact.  Instead, I proposed a radically different approach: Hire a Data Scientist, a Design Thinker, and a Product Leader.  A HR function built around three pillars most HR departments had never considered: 1. #DataScience: To uncover the hidden patterns of organizational behaviour 2. #Design: To craft meaningful employee experiences at every touchpoint 3. #Product Leadership: To scale these experiences through innovative solutions The interview ended cordially. The offer never came. 😀 Then I joined Fractal.  A year in, I reimagined HR, not in theory, but in action. We built four core teams to redefine HR's role as a true business driver: 1. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘆 F͟o͟c͟u͟s͟: Building exceptional managers and leaders M͟i͟s͟s͟i͟o͟n͟: Identify improvement areas, implement targeted interventions, and serve as culture evangelists G͟o͟a͟l͟: Create and retain great leaders who drive organizational success 2. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 F͟o͟c͟u͟s͟: Organizational performance excellence M͟i͟s͟s͟i͟o͟n͟: Design systems that elevate both individual brilliance and collective excellence G͟o͟a͟l͟: Make performance management effortless and impactful 3. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 F͟o͟c͟u͟s͟: Human-centered design M͟i͟s͟s͟i͟o͟n͟: Apply the EACH model (Employees as Clients and Human beings) G͟o͟a͟l͟: Deliver consumer-grade experiences throughout the employee lifecycle 4. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 F͟o͟c͟u͟s͟: Technology enablement and data insights M͟i͟s͟s͟i͟o͟n͟: Build CMMi level 5 processes to manage employee data and lifecycle events G͟o͟a͟l͟: Ensure smooth global operations that scale with growth 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻: #HR 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘂𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹, 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝗥 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲. What outdated models are you still clinging to in your organization? And what might be possible if you had the courage to reimagine them entirely? #HRTransformation #FutureOfWork #EmployeeExperience #OrganizationalDesign #DataDrivenHR #HRReimagined #PeopleFirst #HRInnovation

Lighting in design is a nervous system language. Long before we built walls or wrote words, we read the language of light. The human body doesn’t just see light, it actually feels light on a cellular level. Its tone. Its rhythm. Its emotional temperature. Modern neuroscience has confirmed that light directly influences the production of hormones that govern your mood, alertness, and circadian rhythm. This means that modern neuroscience has also confirmed what the most intuitive designers have always known: Light is not just visual, it’s hormonal, neurological, and deeply emotional. It sets the pace of our days. It tells our bodies when to rest, when to focus, and when to feel safe. In high-end design, this goes far beyond pretty pendants or trendy sconces. This is emotional architecture. This week we explore how sensory-first lighting design helps regulate the nervous system, restore well-being, and quietly redefine what high-end living really means. Happy reading below ↓ 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eiKSccqp #LightingDesign #SensoryDesign #InteriorDesign #Wellbeing #EmotionalArchitecture #InclusiveDesign #WellnessDesign #WellnessArchitecture