Designing to navigate

weeknotes

Aug 2

Happy August people, it’s a wonderful time to be alive. We finally kicked off the project (this is not a drill), met our lovely clients, made some research progress, moved our body, and the world has been very kind. I sometimes forget that beneath the layers of work, school and productivity, is just a tiny human, small voice, big dreams, trying to find life, one week at a time.

What you missed

Building on the micro-journeys across retail and health, identified from discovery
Identified potential target states for each stage on a dimension of similar > enhanced > bonus
Started a template for the working service blueprints to be delivered at the end of 16 weeks
Portfolio epic working sessions, to ensure alignment between service, UX and product
Intros with our new client
Continued iteration of workshop cards for consumer health (great tool for provocations at an c-suite level)
Ran through service design 101s to coach and upskill new designers from scratch

Dissecting the blueprint

I had the joy of running through Service Design 101 a few times this week: a hot (personal) take of what design is, what services mean, how services can be designed, and what it means to be a service designer (in a consultant setting). Although service design sits across one of the many workstreams of my new project, the upselling of this is still very much neccessary for our client, described as ‘low to mid’ design maturity-wise.

The idea that services can be designed is always fascinating to people, yet many of us are designers of services. It’s only week one (officially) and we’ve made so much progress on a blueprint template to co-create towards the next 15 weeks.

Blueprints sometimes get a reputation of being dead artefacts (expensive, yet never used again). A map is only as good as its purpose, and blueprints are no different. Like GPS, it puts you on track when you get lost. A customer journey map tells a story, but a blueprint breaks this story down to digestible building blocks (activities, tasks, evidence, touchpoints). This is where you can find conditions, dependencies, and the right metrics for that service to thrive. Thriving means getting from stage 1-10, and doing this quickly, easily and seamlessly.

Service blueprints are a high-level reference you use when a customer gets stuck on one stage for too long, or when you need to make a decision that can have ramifications for the rest of your service. It’s important this gets treated as a living document, and that everyone is held accountable (not just service designers, sorry!).

Designing for private

The move from designing for public services to private has been a strange transition for me. Government services are usually valued by utility (speed, convenience, accessibility), and the work I now do in retail is priced by experience (personalisation, brand, and loyalty). The constraints look different, and the users too. There’s a lot more room for blue-sky thinking and co-creation through workshops. I find myself asking more ‘what if’s than ‘what about’s.

Researching death

This week is my personal deadline for submitting my ethics application, where I will be proposing a death cafe-like activity on death personalisation, facilitating the right conditions and attitudes to mortality. Besides from the distressing morbidity, getting approval for researching with people is something to tread gently on. In the meantime, lots of online training modules to complete, a research plan to pull together, and application to finally submit.

On a reflective note, I’ve written over 25 weeknotes this year. There have been more weeks to note, as there are left in life, and I’ve never felt so much peace in taking things one at a time. There have been good weeks and terrible weeks but always another week to come.

I don’t know who needs reminding today, but there’s always another week to be excited about. This week is very exciting because it’s my favourite person’s birthday (I know he is reading this so happy birthday you 🎈).