iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What is coming in Q4. The systems thinking content picks up from where Q3 left off. And there is more service design content to write: the content I did not get to in Q3. More on that soon.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The try-before-you-buy content was some of the most useful. Connecting the free course to the paid course through specific content (Day 5, Day 13, the gap between insight and action) gave people a clear path rather than just a pitch. That model is worth continuing in Q4.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The public sector angle matters. Most service design content targets commercial contexts. This audience works in government, health, housing, justice, education. The examples that connect (NI numbers, benefit appeals, casework handoffs, eligibility confusion) reflect the actual context.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The practical problems landed more than the definitions. Posts about handoffs, failure demand, the synthesis problem, the question behind the question: these generated more replies than the framework posts. People recognise the problems before they know the frameworks. That is the right order.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

End of Q3. Thirteen weeks of content, built around the launch of Service design in practice. Here is what I noticed across the content: what seemed to resonate, what generated the most useful discussion.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What metric in your current service has started to drift from the thing it was supposed to measure?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Three things that help: 1. use multiple metrics harder to game simultaneously 2. measure as close to the actual outcome as you can 3. stay curious about what the metric is missing

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The problem is not measurement. It is single metrics. Once you declare one number important enough to optimise for, you separate it from the thing it was measuring.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Call handling time targets. Designed to improve contact centre efficiency. Led to calls being ended before resolution. Volume improved. Failure demand increased.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

School league tables. Designed to improve educational outcomes. Led to schools focusing resources on borderline pupils to maximise table position. The ranking improved. The system did not.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A&E four-hour targets. Designed to reduce long waits. Led to patients being held in ambulances in car parks to stop the clock. The metric improved. The care did not.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Goodhart's Law. Sounds abstract. Shows up everywhere in public services.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Service design in practice covers design principles in Week 3, as part of the service strategy. The Week 3 exercise asks participants to write and test three principles for their own service. What is a design principle that has actually changed a decision in your current work?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Test 4: Has it ever been used to say no to something? A principle that has never constrained anything has never been tested. If you have a principle that nobody has ever invoked to stop a design decision, it is not a principle. It is a slogan.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Test 3: Would different people on the team apply it differently? If ten people read your principle and would make ten different decisions based on it, the principle is too vague. A good principle produces consistent decisions without requiring escalation.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Test 2: Could you do the opposite without feeling obviously wrong? If the opposite sounds absurd ("be inaccessible," "ignore users"), the principle is not doing any work. It just describes the bare minimum. A good principle describes a genuine choice, not the only possible answer.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Test 1: Does it resolve a real conflict? A good principle is useful when two good options are in tension. "Choose the option that is harder for us but easier for the user" resolves a real conflict: between efficiency and experience. "Be accessible" does not resolve anything.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Most design principles are decorative. "User-centred." "Accessible." "Simple." "Joined-up." These are not principles. They are aspirations. They do not help anyone make a decision. Here are four tests that distinguish useful principles from decorative ones.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Where have you felt the cost of committing too early in a project?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is why "bias to action" can be expensive. Moving fast often means closing options prematurely. The question isn't "should we decide now?": it's "what is the cost of deciding later, versus the cost of closing this option today?"

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Committing early has costs that are easy to miss. If you commit to a platform before user research is complete, you lose the option to choose a different one. The cost of that closure is the option value you gave up, and it never appears in anyone's budget.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In design, option value shows up constantly. The discovery phase that delays a platform commitment gives you the option to choose the right platform. The prototype that delays a full build gives you the option to pivot without writing off six months of development.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

An option is the right, but not the obligation, to do something later. Financial options give you the right to buy a stock at a future price. Real options give you the right to make a business decision later, once you know more.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

One of the most expensive design decisions is making the big call too soon. The concept is option value: the value of keeping your options open. A thread. 🧵

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What loops are operating in the system you work in?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Drawing the map is the beginning, not the end. The map helps you see where a small intervention might shift the system's behaviour. And where pushing harder will just produce more of the same.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The interesting things are usually: Loops with long delays (where the system corrects too slowly or overcorrects). Loops that were not intended to be there. Reinforcing loops that nobody is monitoring.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Balancing loops resist change. A goal is compared to the current state. The gap drives action. The action reduces the gap. This is the basic structure of most control systems, including almost all management systems.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Reinforcing loops amplify change. More of A → more of B → more of A. This can be desirable (virtuous cycles) or destructive (runaway escalation).

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The building blocks are simple: → A causes B to increase (positive causal link) → A causes B to decrease (negative causal link) When you trace these links around into a loop, you get either a reinforcing loop or a balancing loop.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A causal loop diagram is one of the most useful tools for understanding why complex problems persist. It shows the structure that produces the behaviour, not just the symptoms.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

These three approaches work together, not in sequence. Affinity mapping shows what is there. The journey lens finds where problems concentrate. The question lens checks you have answered what you set out to learn. Week 2 covers synthesis in detail. What is your current synthesis process?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Approach 3: The question lens. Return to the research questions you started with. For each: what does the evidence say? Where is it strong? Where is it thin? What remains unanswered for the next phase? This is most useful when synthesis needs to directly inform a design decision or a brief.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Approach 2: The journey lens. Place observations on a timeline of the user journey. This shows where problems cluster and where the journey concentrates difficulty. It also reveals which problems are upstream of others: fixing a downstream symptom without addressing the cause won't work.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Approach 1: Affinity mapping. Group observations by similarity. Look for clusters. Name them with insight statements, not labels. "People struggled with the form" is a label. "People can't tell if they're eligible before they start, which leads to abandonment halfway through" is an insight.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

After the research sessions, the synthesis work begins. You have observations, quotes, recordings, notes. Your job now is to turn them into insights that change what you design. Three synthesis approaches that work in practice.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

What's the biggest CapEx decision currently shaping the service you work on?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It also shapes timescales. CapEx projects often trigger higher approval thresholds and longer governance processes. Understanding which bucket your project sits in helps you predict the obstacles before you hit them.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Why does this matter for design work? Because CapEx and OpEx come from different budget pools. When an organisation says "no budget," it might mean no CapEx. It might still have plenty of OpEx. A SaaS tool vs a custom build is a CapEx vs OpEx decision, and it affects what gets approved.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Operating expenditure (OpEx): the ongoing cost of running the organisation. Licences. Subscriptions. Salaries. Support contracts. It goes into the profit and loss account and is expensed immediately.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Capital expenditure (CapEx): money spent to build or acquire something with lasting value. A custom platform. A piece of infrastructure. A major system. It sits on the balance sheet and depreciates over time.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The question isn't build vs buy. It's capital budget vs operating budget. A thread on CapEx and OpEx, and why designers need to understand the difference.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Adaptive management only works if the organisation can actually adapt. The tools matter less than the permission to use them.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The governance question: Does your organisation have a way to stop things that are not working? Or does momentum, sunk cost, and political commitment make it hard to close an experiment once it starts?

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

What to amplify and what to dampen: When an experiment produces a positive signal, amplify it: more resource, more attention, more scale. When an experiment produces a negative signal, dampen it quickly before it becomes embedded.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Safe-to-fail experiments as the mechanism: Small. Reversible. Monitored carefully. Designed to fail informatively if they fail at all. Run multiple experiments pointing in different directions. You learn from the pattern of results.

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Simon Whatley @simonwhatley.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The cycle: Assess → Design → Implement → Monitor → Evaluate → Adjust The emphasis is on the monitor and adjust phases, which most plans underinvest in.

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