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Not the main point of @bm.wel.by's piece, but this sent me on a bit of a jag about the importance of ritual and occasion-making in public services and how we can lose that through digitisation.

Seeing gangs of teenagers clutching envelopes on the streets today makes me think that things like getting exam results (and getting married!) are also about community, peer support and shared experience. We can easily neglect these in our push to individualised, friction-free digital services.

Curious how service designers think about this.

I hear a few different reasons for putting bumps/friction into a journey - whether digital or not - another one where I _think_ a team are actively working on it is health test results & notifications, you'll see some glimpses in: design-history.prevention-services.nhs.uk/managing-my-...

The good thing about working in health is that it has an ethical dimension where everyone agrees a professional should deliver the message, to shape a moment. I like the idea of being (values-based) ethical about social moments that Jeni points to.

But yeah, a lot of the teams we speak to have good evidence for certain generations trusting letters way more than other channels, especially when they’re first entering a ‘pathway’. No one has as much choice as they might like though. Letters for this, notifications for that.