Hola

weeknotes

Aug 30

This summer has felt strangely long yet here we are. I haven’t had a lot of time to slow down until my holiday, and sometimes I forget how much peace and stillness I get from just watching the sunset, looking at the sea and listening to the waves clap.

Post-holiday week

Spent an extended bank-holiday weekend in San Sebastián and Biarritz — non-stop pintxos and dranks
Finished The Silent Patient (probably my first fiction book in a long time)
Finally completed alignment of the service blueprint template
Planning for upcoming blueprint validation and development sessions with UX/R, architecture and business
Finalised all 8 customer journeys across retail and health
Our first show-and-tell opportunity with the client

Part 1

I haven’t had a 72 hour week in a while, yet this one felt a little longer than the usual. We’re now week 5 into the project and into the development of the service blueprints, of which there are 4 end-to-end experiences mapped (2 journeys each). This means 8 customer journeys, thinking about:

Type of journey: are they looking to buy something, or discover something?
Journey steps: what is happening? (i.e. “I make an account…”)
Decision points: which step triggers the start of another journey (i.e. “Books appointment”)
Critical moments: which steps could ‘make or break’ a service (i.e. “Find product on offer”)
Channel: where this step takes place (i.e. in-store, website, app)

From next week, we start to sync with UX and start filling out the blueprint, journey first. We’re starting to see these journeys play a vital role in supporting other workstreams through workshops and comms, which has slightly expedited the need for us to get them done.

Part 2

I go back to 2 weeks of class in 3 weeks (!) for the final few modules before completing my degree. I’ve yet to attend some death cafes for experience and exposure but there are some virtual sessions hopefully going in the diary ASAP. Sometimes it feels like I’m stuck in a loop when working on my dissertation, but the current plan is to get started on literature reviews, find some common themes and start building out the structure of my dissertation.