Playbook for universal design

Universal design methods for more inclusive solutions

Service blueprint Add/remove

Purpose:

A service blueprint can serve multiple purposes.

  1. You can use the service blueprint to analyse the system you are designing/redesigning in order to get an overall understanding of the system.
  2. You can use the service blueprint to analyse the system you are designing/redesigning in order to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.
  3. You can create a service blueprint to show others how your system for your product/service will look like.
  4. You can use the method in a workshop setting asking the participants to create a service blueprint based on assumptions on how they think the system should work. This could provide insight to e.g. steps you as a designer of the system has left out.
Step by step Facilitating tips Materials needed Goes well with Download template (pdf)

Tips to include participants who are not able to:

See

If you or your participants can not see you could use a helper that could help you analyse the system though their eyes.

If you are observing specific interactions within the system that you are e.g. redesigning, ask the person performing the activities to speak out loud about each step.

Focus

If you or your participants have a hard time focusing you could split up the method and only take one of the five stages at a time.

Hold

If you or your participants have a hard time filling in the template, make use of a helper who could fill it in for you while you dictate what it should imply.

Overview

Input

Research, A system to analyse or build

Output

Overview of system

Complexity

Moderate-Complex

Time

2 hours +

Participants

3-4

Activity

  • Be reflective
  • Be analytical
  • Put yourself in others shoes
  • Gather a lot of research
  • Categorize data

Step by step:

  1. Fill in the physical evidence of your system in a row. Physical evidence is objects and places that are affected by the system.

  2. Fill in the customer activity. You do this by filling in each action of the user step by step.

  3. Fill in the onstage contact of your system. These are activities performed by people who have a direct influence of the customers actions.

  4. Fill in the backstage contact of your system. These are activities performed by people who have an indirect influence of the customer’s actions.

  5. Fill in support processes of your system. These are activities that do not necessarily happen in the same moment as the customer performs an action.

When doing this method you should consider:

This method can both be used by you prior to a workshop but can also be included in a workshop. If you do decide to use this method during a workshop it would be a good idea to only ask your participants to fill out one or two stages of the method e.g. just the ‘customer activity’ and either onstage or backstage contact. Filling in all stages of the method requires you/your participants to know the system you are working with really well.

If your participants do not know your system really well you could use the method to see how your participants would assume the system works. It could be interesting to see which steps etc. your participants include, maybe they include steps that you as a designer of the system have not thought about.

Before creating a service blueprint it could be a good idea to have done quite a large amount of research. The better you know your system, the more ‘correct’ the service blueprint will be.

Get to know stakeholders within your system before creating it. This could open up opportunities for them to show how they would prefer the system to be/how it is. Furthermore, this gives you the opportunity of validating the service blueprint with them afterwards. In this way, ther service blueprint becomes a boundary object that is tangible to discuss.It would be beneficial to fill out the template online.

Materials needed:

Template