Service Design And UX

👩🦰 Designing Accessibility Personas (https://lnkd.in/evVnB4hd). How to embed accessibility and test for it early in the design process ↓ We often assume that digital products are merely that — products. They either work or don’t work. That they help people meet their needs or fail on their path to get there. But every product has its own embedded personality. It can be helpful or dull, fragile or reliable, supportive or misleading. When we design it, willingly or unwillingly, we embed our values, views and perspectives into it. Sometimes it’s meticulously shaped and refined. And sometimes it’s simply random. And when that happens, users assign their perception of the product’s personality to the product instead. Products are rarely accessible by accident. There must be an intent that captures and drives accessibility efforts in a product. And the best way to do that is by involving people with temporary, situational and permanent disabilities into the design process. One simple way of achieving that is by inviting people with disabilities in the design process. For that, we could recruit people via tools like Access Works or UserTesting, ask admins of groups and channels on accessibility to help, or drop an email to non-profits that work in accessibility space. Another way is establishing accessibility personas for user journeys. Consider them as user profiles that highlight common barriers faced by people with particular conditions and provide guidelines for designers and engineers on how to design and build for them. E.g. Simone, a dyslexic user, or Chris, a user with rheumatoid arthritis. For each, we document known challenges and notable considerations, designing training tasks for designers and developers and instructions to simulate experience through the lens of these personas. By no means does it replace proper accessibility testing, but it creates a shared understanding about what the experiences are like. You can build on top of Gov.uk’s profound research project (https://lnkd.in/evVnB4hd) — it also explains how to set up devices and browsers, so that each persona has their own browser profile. Once you do, you can always switch between them and simulate an experience, without changing settings every single time. All Accessibility Personas (+ Tasks, Research, Setup) https://lnkd.in/evVnB4hd Accessibility doesn’t have to be challenging if it’s considered early. No digital product is neutral. Accessibility is a deliberate decision, and a commitment. Not only does it help everyone; it also shows what a company believes in and values. And once you do have a commitment, and it will be much easier to retain accessibility, rather than adding it last minute as a crutch — because that’s where it’s way too late to do it right, and way too expensive to make it well. [Useful pointers in the comments ↓] #ux #accessibility

HOW DO YOU MARKET TO PEOPLE AFRAID TO EVEN SAY THE WORDS “PAINFUL SEX” OR “POSTPARTUM DESIRE” OUT LOUD? One of the most rewarding parts of the MySine strategy project was defining detailed audience personas for a femtech brand operating in a highly sensitive, often taboo space. We didn’t want generic “women 18–35.” We wanted to understand their real lives, pain points, and needs. Some of our final personas included: • The Informed Intimacy Seeker: Urban, health-conscious, eager for scientific guidance. • The Quietly Curious: Private, cautious, needs anonymity to learn without shame. • The Postpartum Rediscoverer: Navigating identity, desire, and intimacy after childbirth. • The Cycle-Conscious Planner: Interested in hormone-driven libido changes, planning for pregnancy. We mapped their pain points (shame, misinformation, partner communication gaps) to specific messaging strategies and channels This wasn’t just segmentation—it was about empathy and inclusive design. ✨ Have you built audience personas for taboo or sensitive categories? I'd love to have a conversation and talk more.... . . . . #UserPersonas #AudienceStrategy #Femtech #DesignThinking #BrandStrategy

“Personas are pointless.” I used to disagree. Then I agreed. Now? "It depends." Once, I spent six weeks building a set of personas (you can see one below). Blood, sweat, and not-so-fun tears. I put everything I knew into them which, to be fair, wasn’t much back then. I couldn’t sleep the night before the big reveal. And then... ↳ "Oh yeah, we already knew that." ↳ "This isn't our exact focus anymore" ↳ Nods but no action A big old flop. So, can personas be pointless? Absolutely. - If they’re made in isolation - If they aren’t tied to real decisions - If they don’t change how people work But when they do work, it’s because they’re built for decision-making, not lamination. Here are 5 ways to make personas actually useful, based on years of trial, error, and one too many sad personas gathering dust in Google Drive: 1. Run an “Information Needs” workshop before you start Ask your PMs, designers, and devs: “What do you wish you knew about our users to make better decisions?” Document their needs → design your research to answer them → bake those answers into your persona. 2. Build proto-personas collaboratively to surface assumptions early Before you do any research, map out what people think they know. Use sticky notes color-coded by: - Assumption - Analytics - Existing research This reveals gaps, misalignment, and gives you a jumpstart on where to dig deeper during interviews and information to include in your personas. 3. Anchor personas in journey stages, not personality traits Forget personality sliders or random hobbies. Instead, map: - What users are trying to accomplish - What frustrates them at each stage - Which tools they use and why If your persona doesn’t help answer: “What would break their flow here?," rewrite it. 4. Activate personas through workshops, not PDFs Don’t “present” personas, use them. Host an ideation workshop where teams solve for a key need or pain point. Or run a mini-hackathon based on persona insights. 5. Embed personas into rituals and review them quarterly Add a persona lens to roadmap planning: “Which persona does this initiative support?” Post them in your workspace, tag bugs/features with persona names, and revisit them every quarter to update insights. So no, personas aren’t inherently pointless. But pointless personas are everywhere. Always ask yourself: “Will this persona change what we do next?” // If you're struggling to put personas together and don't know what "bad" or "good" really look like, watch this video where I share and diagnose all the problems (and good parts) of the personas I created through the years: https://lnkd.in/etMeeSS9

We’ve spent decades removing friction for guests. Maybe that’s now becoming a problem. Hospitality has been obsessed with “frictionless” service, streamlined check-ins, and polished efficiency. But here’s the catch: when everything is easy, nothing is memorable. Gen Z and younger luxury travelers are tired of skating across glossy surfaces. They crave meaning, stories, and belonging, and meaning often comes with a little effort. Cultural brands already get this. Bon Iver’s album launch sent fans smoked salmon with a poet’s insert, a candle that smelled like a winter cabin, and an app guiding them to intimate listening parties. Many entry points, each a breadcrumb leading you deeper. Some hotels are rewriting this playbook. Aman Tokyo’s tea ceremony is an intentionally slow, ritualized welcome. It’s not convenient, but that’s the point. The friction makes it sacred, and guests leave with a story that outlasts any room amenity. — 5 Ways to Design Joyful Friction in Hospitality 1. Name your rituals. Stop hiding magic behind generic labels. “Turndown service” becomes “Night Script.” The “welcome drink” becomes “The First Pour.” Language signals intention and gives small moments emotional weight. 2. Multi-sensory storytelling kits. Borrow from cultural launches: On arrival, offer a mini city-scent candle, a handwritten poem from a local artist, and a ticket to an intimate lobby performance. Guests engage through touch, scent, and story, each doorway into your brand narrative. 3. Ask, then delight. Have guests complete a three-question “mood card” pre-arrival. Match it with a curated in-room surprise, a book, cocktail, or soundtrack. Effort makes them feel seen (backed by the IKEA effect: effort increases attachment). 4. Create scarcity with care. Design one-hour windows of magic: a nightly martini ritual, a chef’s table for four, or a password-protected dessert. Scarcity raises perceived value while making participation feel earned. 5. Ladder your story over time. Instead of trying to impress all at once, let the brand unfold: Visit 1: A custom coaster. Visit 2: A staff pin unlocking a library room. Visit 3: A seat at the chef’s counter. Each stay deepens their connection and drives return intent. "When everything is effortless, nothing is extraordinary." — Why This Works Choice overload studies prove curated experiences are more satisfying than endless options: - The scarcity principle shows limited access elevates perceived worth. - The IKEA effect reveals guests value what they invest in. Luxury travelers aren’t chasing convenience anymore. They want layered experiences that feel personal, not packaged. — Final Thoughts Hotels that dare to introduce meaningful friction don’t feel cold or inaccessible; they feel alive. Because in hospitality, perfection isn’t about smoothing every edge. It’s about designing edges worth touching. #LuxuryHospitality #GuestExperience #BrandStorytelling #ExperienceDesign #EmotionalDesign

Efficiency isn’t neutral. When we design care out of services, we design loneliness in. This week I was talking to a friend who mentioned that her elderly neighbour was devastated that Meal on Wheels was no longer available in her area. In many parts of the UK, this lifeline—hot meals delivered to elderly and vulnerable people, by someone who actually stops and chats, has disappeared. In its place? Tech platforms that let people click and collect or sign up for pre-selected menus. Yes, food is still delivered. But the connection is gone. That hello, a smile, someone noticing if you're not yourself. That short exchange is sometimes the only contact people have all day. And for a lot of people, that matters. It got me thinking, What happens when we optimise people out of care? When connection is seen as “inefficient”? Designing for social impact means constantly asking ourselves: What are we solving for? If it’s only efficiency or cost, we’ll continue to build services that function but don’t care. Tech isn’t neutral, it reflects values. And when tech replaces human interaction in care systems ( instead of supporting it), we risk deepening isolation, especially among those already pushed to the margins. As service designers and nonprofit practitioners, we need to ask: • Are we designing with people, or just for them? • Can we centre interdependence over independence in our models? • What does it mean to design with care, not just for efficiency? The “solution” isn’t always an app. Sometimes, it’s a cup of tea and a conversation #socialimpact #design #community __________________________ Design for Social Impact Lab is a social enterprise on a mission to support organisations and rebellious practitioners design equity-centred, anti-oppressive programs, policies and research * We are on a mission to improve the accessibility of our website and resources ( I will be sharing an exciting collaboration coming up!). If you are using assistive technologies to read our posts, and find that something is not accessible, let us know and we can share alternative formats and see where we can improve our alt-text descriptions

Most UX teams have been there: standing in front of a wall of sticky notes, surrounded by user quotes and caffeine, trying to decide if “Goal Oriented Greg” and “Curious Carla” are genuinely different people or just the same imaginary user with better handwriting. Persona discovery sessions like this often feel productive, the colors, the discussions, the post-its forming patterns, but deep down, we know something is off... The process is usually more art than science, more consensus building than discovery. It produces personas that sound nice in presentations but rarely hold up when real users start behaving unpredictably. Good news?! There is a more rigorous way to approach this, one that turns persona creation from a creative exercise into an analytical process grounded in evidence. Instead of guessing who your users are, you can identify them empirically by examining their real behaviors, motivations, and characteristics across your datasets. This is where clustering analysis becomes invaluable, allowing your data to uncover the story of your users on its own. Clustering uses statistical algorithms to uncover patterns and similarities across multiple dimensions of user data, revealing natural groups that exist beneath the surface. These are not personas invented in a meeting; they are personas discovered in the data. Here is how it works in practice. You begin by gathering rich, multidimensional data, including behavioral metrics. After cleaning and preparing your data, you apply a clustering algorithm such as K Means, Hierarchical Clustering, or Gaussian Mixture Models. These methods analyze the combined patterns across all features and group users who are statistically similar into clusters. Each cluster represents a group of people who share distinctive traits, perhaps they are highly efficient but disengaged, or slower but deeply curious. From there, you interpret and label these clusters in human terms. The data gives you the structure, and your UX insight gives it meaning. You might visualize the results, examine which variables most differentiate each group, and build out personas that reflect the real diversity within your audience. These personas are no longer fictional composites; they are data backed archetypes that show how meaningful subgroups actually behave, think, and feel. The benefits are substantial. Clustering eliminates much of the bias that comes from relying on small samples or internal intuition. It exposes hidden user types that might never emerge from interviews alone, such as a quiet but influential group of users whose needs are consistently overlooked. It also creates alignment across teams because the evidence is transparent and reproducible. When you present personas derived from clustering, you can trace every insight back to data, not opinion. #PersonaDiscovery #UXResearch #DataDrivenDesign #CustomerSegmentation #ProductStrategy #UserExperience #QuantitativeUX

Culture is and should be something we include when designing for behavior change. This great book by Erin Meyer called The Culture Map can help you get your mindset right on culture. Culture matters because it helps us get more context on how our solutions are going to work in different places, the norms and culture in one place may not work in the next. I learned this not only by reading books like these but by first-hand experience, as I have lived in 10+ cities including Singapore, Dubai, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Madrid… and every place taught me something different about how people make decisions, communicate, and respond to change. The same message, design, or behavioral intervention can land completely differently depending on the context. What you may think is motivating or respectful in one culture can feel confusing or even off-putting in another, so never copy paste generic strategies. Culture shapes what people pay attention to, how they evaluate information, and how they build trust, all things that matter when we’re trying to influence behavior or design for adoption. Here are 4 areas you can think about and include in your archetypes or change frameworks: 1) Communication: low vs high context 2) Evaluation: direct vs indirect negative feedback 3)Persuading: principles-first vs applications-first Scheduling: flexible vs linear time These may sound simple, but they influence everything from how feedback is given, to how quickly teams make decisions, to how people experience time pressure or structure. When we bring culture in early, not as an afterthought, but as part of our behavioral framing.... we design with more realism, it also helps us anticipate friction, design around norms, and build strategies that actually fit the environments they’re meant for. This is how we approach culture and change projects in our advisory and consulting work. Have you read this book, and implemented some of the learnings?

Do you really know who you're designing for? It's easy to bucket users up into the same user type and talk about them as if they're all the same person We say things like: Our users are Patients and Doctors. Patients need XX, Doctor's pains are YY But one patient isn't the same as another. So why do we design like they are? Or, often the user stays the same, but they shift between different states (sometimes within the same day) depending on their context. For example, I might cook for myself at lunch, but cook for my family at dinner. I'm the same person, using the same app, but I have different needs. Considering and designing for the the needs / goals / pain for the overall user type starts to feel generic, and disconnected from the world people actually experience That's why I like to use lenses. (It's a way of considering things from different perspectives). Each lens includes a description, needs, behaviours, emotions, pains and a key principle to remember For me personally, using lenses feels less static and more representative of the fluidness of designing for people on the other side of the glass Going back to the cooking example, the user type might be "at-home cooks" but we can break it down into multiple lenses. Some lenses we might have are: → By social context: solo lens vs family lens → By emotional state: The mid-week panic → By experience level: Learning / low confidence lens → By environment: Small kitchen lens vs well equipped There will naturally be overlaps in lens needs, for example, someone that's high confidence cook might also have a well equipped kitchen. Or the family lens might be linked to the mid-week panic. The great thing is how to see where needs overlap and where there's additional needs or conflicts. That way, we can be more intentional about how we're designing Here's a few ways I like to use lenses: → In journeys to see how needs change across contexts → When designing to see where the design works / fails → When scoping to see overlaps / conflicts in needs → In research prep to guide around different contexts → When testing to consider different states & scenarios → In design reviews to challenge our assumptions → When scoping to consider what we will / won't explore

Luxury isn’t about how expensive something looks. It’s about how deeply it makes you feel at home. I’ve spent 27 years building hotels across India. From quiet backwater stays in Kerala to palace-style resorts in Rajasthan. I’ve seen the industry chase polished sameness thinking that’s what guests want. But here’s what I’ve learned. People don’t remember perfect service. They remember moments that feel real. Let's say you are in Jaipur, 2023, two hotels opened just weeks apart. The first one was a global chain near the airport. It had chrome fittings, a buffet labeled "continental," and a heritage tour with a pre-recorded voice. The second was a restored haveli in the walled city. It had hand-blocked bed linens from local artisans, Jaisalmer stone floors, and walking tours led by a local historian. The staff shared folk stories and even taught guests basic Rajasthani phrases. That haveli could charge 40 percent more per night. And based on insights from heritage hotels, we could easily predict a 75% occupancy People didn’t come just for a room. They came for a feeling. A story. A sense of belonging. 82 percent of Indian travelers under 40 say they’ll pay more for culturally rooted stays. Hotels that serve local food and experiences earn 30 percent more from non-room revenue. Still, we see chains applying cookie-cutter SOPs in places that deserve better. Imported furniture in places known for handcrafted woodwork. If you're building in hospitality, here’s how you can create more connection: ✔️ Replace generic decor with regionally crafted design ✔️ Let your team speak in the local language proudly ( Even if not all, tech few phrases to others, make the guest feel that its their second home ) ✔️ Create micro-experiences based on your location’s real stories ✔️ Hire cultural insiders, not just marketers ( for ex- A kathak artist as your tour guide for the hotel ) ✔️ Treat design like storytelling, not just styling In 2025, real luxury isn’t sterile. It’s personal, emotional, and deeply local.

I just returned from Japan, and it gave me one of the most thought-provoking lessons I’ve encountered in the broader world of hospitality and service culture. Across Europe, we tend to define “good hospitality” through emotional signals: warmth, expressiveness, visible friendliness. A smile becomes a symbol of sincerity. We use interpersonal cues to judge the quality of the experience even before the service itself begins. But Japan reframes that definition entirely — and, in many ways, more rigorously. Interactions there can appear reserved to a Western eye: fewer smiles, less outward warmth, a quieter emotional presence. And yet the hospitality — the real substance of it — is executed with exceptional precision. The continuity, the craftsmanship, the attention to detail, the respect embedded in the entire experience… it’s a form of service designed around mastery, not performance. It highlighted something I think we often overlook in the West: We sometimes overvalue the appearance of warmth, and undervalue the technical and intentional components that actually define high-quality service. This isn’t about comparing cultures. It’s about recognising that genuine hospitality can be expressed in ways that don’t rely on emotional performance. In Japan, care is demonstrated through excellence: in consistency, in discipline, in the integrity of what’s being delivered — not in how expressively it’s presented. Hospitality there doesn’t need to convince you. It doesn’t need to charm you. It simply commits to doing things impeccably well — and lets that be the expression of respect. For anyone interested in the psychology of service, it’s a powerful reminder: authentic hospitality isn’t always the warmest one — sometimes it’s the one built on intention rather than expression. #Omotenashi #ServiceCulture #HospitalityLeadership #CulturalIntelligence #ExperienceDesign #ServiceExcellence #CustomerExperience #JapanTravel #JapaneseCulture #TravelInsights #CulturalObservations #TravelReflections #TravelDeeper #MeaningfulTravel