Service Design

With the experience of having worked on many complex transformation projects, there was often a time where difficult questions had to be asked about the overall direction or scope of the project. It also required the creation of many visual artefacts to help understand the bigger picture of each service. When considering a much broader user journey - this would often cross channels also beyond just the short-term digital solution. Here are some examples of different maps and diagrams that have emerged, to help the wider team better appreciate this - often produced collaboratively and with real research evidence behind each one.

Eco-system map

An example of an eco-system map, which helped visualise the wider experience of when a university student is deciding on their accomodation.

As-is process map with research evidence

An as-is journey map that includes a step-by-step flow of when staff deal with enquiries, and the mapped below each stage, are positive insights and negative pain points from user research.

Design Sprint day 1 - mapping the problem

Upon taking part in an intensive 5-day design sprint, this was the result after day 1 - where we collaboratively mapped out the problem space with real research insights and pain points, and then began to draft ‘how might we’ statements, that would help the problem we’d go onto solve in the coming days.

Speculative design mock-ups for user research

To help conduct user research around a topic that we’d found was sometimes difficult to explain purely with words, we helped the participants by mocking up real-world examples of tangible visual artefacts that they would be familiar with, which helped us gain richer insight and a way to consider existing and potential future user touch points. All mock-ups above are purely fictional and not based on any real person or data.

To-be map of a payment enquiry process

A future state map that showed how a service enquiry process was going to change - again with user needs mapped against the process steps. The image has been blurred to keep the project confidential.

Pre-retirement research insights map

A large-scale paper map produced on a large wall space It brought together research insights from across multiple smaller teams to begin to look at a much bigger life event of those planning for retirement.

Alpha service assessment map

A giant map produced to talk through an entire service going through its alpha digital transformation assessment. This map included step-by-step stages of what was mostly an internal automated process - but did still have impacts along the way for the end users. Against each step of the process were research insights, user needs, the problems being solved and the value of doing each thing - a good collaborative team exercise where research, design, technical development and product management worked together. The image has been blurred to keep the project confidential.

Storymapping

A way to visualise when users start off frustrated or angry, reach a call handler, and with the way the new digital staff service would be designed after gathering user research evidence, we could aim to at least help the user leave with more confidence and hope by providing the right content they needed at that time.