Brilliance by Simplicity in Service Design

For the 4th of July weekend, my wife and I went to a mountain resort to escape the heat and humidity of Washington DC.

At one of the restaurants I came across this wonderful small piece of service design – the napkin with name, number and email.

Naturally, such a napkin used as coaster at the bar would be useless in the local neighborhood watering-hole where “everybody knows your name”.

However, where nobody knows your name - in a bar where there are virtually zero regulars such as at a resort, business/ airport hotel this contact napkin makes all the sense in the world.

I guess that nobody did a proper randomized control trial to see if these napkins increase follow-up interactions. Even so, the napkin makes sense in the right context and I find it brilliantly simple.

On the opposite side of simplicity, here’s a picture of a road sign I recently encountered.