Principle #3: A bad service does not explain it’s purpose

At the Bad Services Corporation we have 15 principles of Bad Service Design.

Principle #3: A bad service does not explain its purpose

If you want to implement this principle, make sure you’re extremely vague about what your service does, how it works and who it’s for

Don’t give away any information that would help your users know if this is the right service for them

Make sure the name of your service makes your users think your service does something completely different to what it actually does. Better yet, call it a proper noun and expect your users to intuit its purpose by thinking hard about what kind of service ‘Jane’ or ‘PS15’ might be

Don’t tell your users your prices

Don’t tell them what your service does

Don’t tell them why it exists or how to access it

Definitely don’t tell people how your service works, where to access it or how long it takes

Be as vague as possible so that only people who assume the service is right for them will use it. These might be the people you want in the service or it might not. Either way the people who make it through will probably have completely the wrong impression of what’s going on, so you’re off to a flying start!

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Of course, the Bad Services Corporation is a spoof company built by the School of Good Services. You really should make your services easy to find. But we found leaning into some satire a good way to expose the patterns of Bad Services.