The Best Tools for Remote Collaboration in Service Design

Service design is quite an analogue craft. We value real human-to-human interaction a lot! And be honest, nothing beats a physical prototype right?

But sometimes circumstances don’t allow you to be physically present with the people you’re design with and for. Maybe you working in cross country team or… a virus prevents you from leaving home.

Nowadays, there are many digital tools that help us to collaborate as service designers, even if we’re at a distance. In the past, I’ve reviewed some of these tools like Custellence, Smaply, Miro and Mural. But there are many more helpful tools out there like TheyDo, Notion and Zoom!

So I reached out to the service design community on LinkedIn and asked which tools enable and facilitate remote collaboration for them.

Just to be clear, the goal is to create an overview of the tools people are actually using. Not to create a complete list of all the available online tools.

Keep it simple

The simplicity of brown paper, sticky notes and some markers is probably one of the things that make service design so accessible. Let’s not lose that when we go digital. So keep things as simple as possible.

And don’t overlook that there is a lot you can do using tools that you’re already very familiar with like Google Slides, Pinterest or WhatsApp. For instance, I’ve used WhatsApp (groups) to do a diary study in a project, with great success!

Now having said all this let’s look at the tools service designers recommend.

Tools for remote collaboration

I advise you to also read (some of the) comments on LinkedIn to get a better understanding of how and why people are recommending these tools.

Which tools help you to work remotely?

Leave a comment down below (even if the tool is already in the list) and share how you’re using the tool and why!