The Service Desk
You have analytics and hunches. What you don't have is clarity on people's information needs or on whether you're meeting them.
That's where we come in.
We help identify information opportunities and build services people value.
We use the toolkit of service design, a discipline that connects an organization's people, products, and practices to build better services, to help information producers understand what people genuinely need and build solutions that create tangible value.
Through research and design methods, we work with you to:
- Understand what people actually need information on (not what you hope they want)
- Identify specific, serviceable opportunities you're positioned to meet
- Design, build and test solutions that create tangible value
We worked with 30+ organizations across four continents in our 2025 beta and found this approach resonated across organization types, sizes and teams.
The result: We've moved dozens of information producers from guessing to knowing, and from knowing to building something that is useful, matters to people, and offers a sustainable strategy forward.
What we do
We’ll provide strategy that starts with people's needs, not institutional assumptions.
G. Azzetta
How we work
We start with structured research to understand what your audience actually needs, then work with you to identify the smallest viable intervention that creates real value.
Through rapid prototyping and testing, we help you build evidence for what works before you commit resources to content production or distribution.
G. Azzetta
What participants say
"Just absolutely so worth the time.” — Consultation participant
“It was great to talk through challenges when it comes to serving audience needs and think of creative ways to approach them...I feel like just even asking the questions and discussing them is a huge step forward in the right direction.” — Consultation participant
“[I took away] the large number of our journalism colleagues who agree that we need to change our approach and metrics to be of better service to our audiences.” — Workshop participant
”I finally found a space where I can discuss my concerns, angst, fears, struggles, questions, ideas and suggestions about how to build a news product that truly meets a need and services communities, beyond the ways we traditionally talk about these things.” — Consultation participant
“There are a lot of people interested in making service journalism work.” — Workshop participant
What brings us here
This initiative was born out of our frustration with too many people creating "content" without knowing whether it's actually useful to anyone, a problem we saw across the smallest community creators to the largest international legacy publications.
We, Madison Karas and Patrick Boehler, felt this could be addressed through the toolkit of service design, a discipline that connects an organization's people, products, and practices to build better services.
We provide methods for information producers to become intentional service providers. In journalism, service design means designing our information offerings based on what people actually need to equip their lives, not what we assume they want to read.
Since being incubated in 2025 by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism as the Audience Help Desk, we've provided research and design guidance for 30+ organizations across four continents and engaged 200+ journalism practitioners on using service-oriented strategies to create tangible value in journalism.
Our resources for you
Looking for where to start with service? Here, we catalog the methods, frameworks, and approaches we've used at Service Desk.
It is a work in progress that we will keep adding to.
G. Azzetta
You just read what the The Service Desk is and its background.
- Read more about what we do.
- Read more on how we work.
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?