Guy: Eight. Do the penis test and think about what could go wrong.
Guy: Welcome to Service Design Principles. I'm Guy Martin, Joined by the author of the Service
Design Principles series of books. Founder of the Swiss Innovation Academy and Service design
practitioner, the eloquent Daniele Catalanotto.
Daniele: Hi Guy, such a pleasure to be here.
Guy: Same here. Now, each episode we look at one of the principles from your book, the Service
Design Principles 1 to 100. And today it's principle number eight. Do the penis test and
think about what could go wrong.
Guy: Now, I'm a little nervous to ask, Daniele, but what is the penis test and is it going to
hurt?
Daniele: No, it's not going to hurt. It's. It's going
Guy: Phew.
Daniele: to be fine. It's going to be fine.
Guy: Okay,
Daniele: So basically the penis test is based on an old app. Maybe you remember that one because
we are both very old. It is. Do you remember ChatRoulette
Guy: I've heard of it. I've heard of it. Yeah.
Daniele: Which was back in the days I don't know if it still exists, but back in the days, it was
a service where where you could just randomly get in a video call with someone from around the
world. And. And then. And then you would meet new people in a way that where at the start of
the Internet, which was something where people would say, Oh, that's a great idea, you know?
Daniele: Suddenly I'm with someone in India suddenly, I'm with someone from Helsinki etc. So
really cool idea. But then obviously, you know, people the people found ways to do make that
more interesting. And so suddenly, the one joke that happened is that you would try to connect
with someone and what you would see is basically just a penis.
Guy: Oh,
Daniele: Whic would be quite disturbing, obviously, because the service was not used only
by people of age, but also by children and teenagers.
Guy: Right. Yeah.
Daniele: And so which then creates a big problem, you know, because then you say, okay, something
which was made to promote an idea that we are all citizens of the same world and we can meet
other cultures in a very simple way. Even if you can't afford a plane ticket, you can experience
the world and suddenly it becomes a thing where you get harassed. And this just shows that
sometimes it's just important to think, how could people misuse the thing that you're
building? Meaning, could they put a penis somewhere?
Guy: Right.
Daniele: Could they write something you never could they write penis, you know, could they do
something? And and sometimes just thinking about how people could misuse it can help you trust to
to remove some parts which maybe are not necessary or just add some safety elements that
make it sure that that it doesn't happen.
Guy: Right. Okay. That makes sense. So basically, it's ensuring that the users of the service,
they're still empowered. They still have a choice over how they're using the service, and
they're not suddenly presented with something that they never signed up for and they didn't
want. You know, it's a if someone uses Zoom or Skype or something and they want to show their
genitals, I guess that's up to the parties involved. But on a service like this where, the
video just switches on straight away that, you know, you don't have that choice. And that's I
mean, in the real world, outside of a video call that's assault, right? You're exposing yourself
to someone.
Daniele: Absolutely.
Guy: So it should have you know, you should think about the same potential consequences of
that even in a virtual environment.
Daniele: And there are very simple things you can do. For example, Twitter back back in the
days when it was still called Twitter, the one thing that they did knowing doing a bit for them,
their own penis test was, okay, people are going to put photos on this, okay, We're going to
remove all the metadata about geolocation. Geolocation. It doesn't change that people can
put the photo. But what is changed is, is that if a kid puts a photo, you can't find where this
kid was just by downloading the photo and then reading the metadata.
Guy: Metadata. Right.
Daniele: Yeah. And that's very simple things. But then you can you can also expand it to to
more funny stuff where back in the days when I was in working in graphic design, when we did
logos, we always did a game which was could this be seen as boobs, a penis or a vagina?
Guy: Right.
Daniele: You know, if you wanted, you know, it's like trying to, to, to look at the form and say,
could someone think this is not what we meant?
Guy: Sure.
Daniele: And
Daniele: and you know, I have stories where this happened to to some of my colleagues, you know,
where they did something which was never meant to to to to be seen like that. And then it
created a huge chaos because then suddenly someone said, oh, this kind of looks like two
people having sex is like, that wasn't the idea. How do you why do you see that illustration that
way? And then, you know, they turned it and said, but, you know, if you turn it that way, you
could definitely see them licking each other.
Guy: Yeah.
Daniele: It's like,
Guy: It's obvious.
Daniele: oh,
Guy: Yeah.
Daniele: that was seriously, you know, and and and for you as a designer, as a creator, you're
like, now, but come on, you know, we don't have to see sex in everything, you know,
Guy: Yeah.
Daniele: But still there are people would do it and therefore you have to to just mitigate that
risk by, by being a bit silly and saying, oka, how could people do something bad with this?
Guy: Yeah. And as the creator, you have the intent in your mind about the design of
something. But the people looking at that for the first time, they don't have that same intent.
They're interpreting it just as they see it. So if they see if they see a penis or they see two
people having sex, that's what they'll see. And they'll forever associate it with that as well.
Daniele: which is not a problem in many cases.
Guy: No,
Daniele: You know, sometimes it's even, you know, if you are, I don't know, an alcohol brand, you
know, could be very cool. You know, if it's Red Bull doing that and by mistake, you know, they
could even even play with it. But in the case that that that I know it was a church,
Guy: Right.
Daniele: you know, and then it was a bit of a problem, you know, having a church thing where
you could think that it was two people having sex and it was not. It was just someone playing
the trumpet
Guy: Right.
Daniele: and another one singing in a in a microphone. But then the microphone could be
seen as a penis. And it's like, oh, okay, that wasn't so. And obviously, you're always smarter
after the fact.
Guy: Yeah.
Daniele: And that's why having this kind of little principles, you know, they help you just,
you know, be smarter after the fact. That before the fact
Guy: Yep. Well, it's true. I didn't have to be nervous about the penis test, and it didn't hurt
in the way I thought it would, but it could still hurt. As I as a designer, you might have
to rethink some of your. Your designs and original ideas if it doesn't pass the penis test.
Daniele: Yeah. It didn't hurt the in between the legs, but your heart is maybe bleeding a little
bit.
Guy: Indeed. Thanks very much, Daniele.
Daniele: Thank you. Cheers.