Michael Clark

In-Progress Case Study: Service Design Consultation

Dear folks evaluating my work, hi! 👋

I’m currently working on a service design project for MERGE Insights, a Canadian consultancy offering their clients validation, verification, and evaluation services of products and services (e.g. from first-time experiences using moisture sensors to field studies of hotel experiences). My task is to facilitate future-state service blueprint workshops and provide strategic action planning guidance to optimize MERGE’s service offerings. These eventual outcomes will first require research and analysis, persona development and customer journey mapping. My intent for the outcome of this work is that my client will gain the actionable insights they need to bring the best version of their services to life in successful ways.

The following is a glimpse at this ongoing project, but I hope it gives you a sense of how I’m approaching this initiative as I’m in the midst of it.

—Michael

My client & me — Overview

My client, a service consultancy, evaluates if and how new products function as intended, fit a targeted market, and are accepted by customers.

This business was in a nascent stage in early 2020 with initial agreements established and new contracts being drawn up when the global pandemic struck. The principal contracted Covid-19, halted all work, and was eventually diagnosed with Long Covid.

Symptoms lasted several years and the consultancy was temporarily closed.

With the principal now recovered, the consultancy is open for business again and fresh eyes are turning to its service offerings. This is where I come in.

My role is to understand this consultancy and with my expertise, strategically and tactically guide my client to providing improved services, equipped with an action plan to see that vision realized.

My client works with consumer and commercial products, such as TV panels, theatre projection lenses, and sensors used by tradespeople.
A cropped promotion of “The Blind Date” – a service that produces a customer-facing journey map and report of an end-user’s experiences during a product lifecycle evaluation (without any influence by my client’s customer, the product creator, on this evaluation).
A cropped promotion of “The Field Trip” – a service providing field research (involving actual tradespeople using the product and reporting their experiences when relevant).
A Venn diagram promoting my client’s range of services.

Process – Planning my approach

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of steps I plan to take to accomplish this project:

  • Kickoff
  • Request website URL, client pitch deck, business plan, origin story, prior research, issues/tickets, early half-baked ideations now stored on their kid’s iPad, etc.
  • Review supplied resources, meet with client to understand current state
  • Define value proposition of MERGE’s services
  • Develop personas
  • Define scenarios, phases, steps
  • Identify scenario roles
  • Identify (11) relevant categories/lanes [we’re doing an Earth lane – this’ll be a great value-add]
  • Conduct a high-level journey map with client of future state
  • Prep reference screens/documents/sketches representing scenario steps
  • Prep blueprinting templates
  • Schedule workshops (1.5hr/2hr/3hr; x5/x10/x20)
  • Hold initial blueprinting sessions on a “simple” scenario [Blind Date?]
  • Determine, invite additional workshop participants [maybe the plumber for a tradesperson? G on the customer-side?]
  • Harvest blueprints; RACI charting, develop action plan, KPIs (in-progress)

Process – Prep work ahead of blueprinting & artefacts

A snapshot in time of some prep work and stray artefacts ahead of future workshops, etc.

(Proto-)personas to be developed: C*, PM, Designer, Engineer, QA tester [this eventually evolved into a client Product Owner, as well as a MERGE primary service provider]

Roles likely to be present in scenarios: C*, PM, Designer, Engineer, QA tester, client principal, client tester, job-specific tradesperson [client-side practitioners were removed from the scenarios, though legal and secondary service providers at MERGE were added]

Scenarios targeted for blueprinting: S1. Service selection, contract negotiation; S2. Blind Date service; S3. Field Trip service; S4. Integrate service(s) into client workflow(s)

Lanes to include for each scenario blueprinted: Step (visible/hidden), Touchpoints, Role(s), Processes, Technologies, Policies, Potential pitfalls, Rationale, Questions, Notes, Sustainability

Early notes re: things I need to clarify with my client and prompts as they dig up historical material for me.
An initial rough-and-ready value proposition stemming from an early conversation with MERGE’s principal, followed by a revised text-based version and the output of an exercise where I worked with MERGE’s principal to re-articulate this proposition per a common canvas template, this one by Thomson et al.
Early notes re: potential scenarios to target, balancing impact with time and energy.
A portion of an email I sent my client contact listing specific potential artefacts to send me as prep material.
Chatting about work in progress…
Prep work-in-progress from a Figma scratchpad (I was working on a candidate scenario, basing the phases on the lifecycle stages of this evaluation process) (“client” here is from my client’s perspective).
Prep work re: an example/draft RACI matrix to be used during workshops to clarify role involvement in a scenario.
A portion of my notes while listening to the origin story of my client’s consultancy. This and other interviews helped me understand my client’s vision for their consultancy and how they defined success (not through maximal scaling and financial profits).
Breaking down the steps of a forking scenario (with highlighted notes to follow-up on).
Pt. 1 of producing a customer journey map for the Product Owner persona as they work with their teams to develop, launch, and improve a product – diagrammed as steps, an experience line and opportunities.
Pt. 2 of producing a customer journey map as the Product Owner’s steps, pains, and gains are identified.
A draft persona for a client Product Owner – a technical fixer interfacing with multiple teams to develop successful products, though sometimes these channels provide conflicting signals or omit actionable information.
Working remotely with my client-side point of contact to discuss personas under development that will be used in our journey mapping and service blueprinting activities.

Process – Tooling

Figma, TheyDo, and Miro as candidate tools for remote service blueprinting, journey mapping, and persona development

I initially considered Miro and Figma for remote blueprinting workshops and action planning due to their ease of use when creating custom blueprints and facilitating remote collaboration, then also considered TheyDo after a strong testimonial about its integrated suite of journey management features.

I decided to use Figma’s Figjam due to its freedom to create fully custom blueprint structures and its simple remote collaboration interface for my anticipated remote activity participants who aren’t regular users of these software software packages.

Future-state blueprints – 4 scenarios covering service initiation, variant services, and service conclusion

I worked with my client-side point of contact to determine 4 scenarios that would be most valuable for our blueprinting sessions

These 4 scenarios were selected based on their unique importance and likelihood to occur across projects.

I established an effective rhythm of 2 1.5hr blueprinting sessions per week with the MERGE participants. This was a manageable balance to maintain focus and velocity.

For each blueprint, I included ‘cheat sheets’ of different note explanations (e.g. to distinguish a policy from a process) and reference documents (e.g. the weighted criteria to be configured in a risk calculation), as well as a colour-coded legend for easy reference.

I recorded audio and video from some of these to gather key discussions.

Screenshot of a work-in-progress blueprint for a “Blind Date” evaluation of a product or service (.pdf version here).
Screenshot of a work-in-progress blueprint after a couple more sessions for a “Blind Date” evaluation of a product or service.

After Blueprinting – Reflections & Implementation Planning

Once I had developed 4 blueprints with MERGE Insights, my next task was to develop actionable insights from our blueprinting sessions and create an implementation plan

I started by metaphorically taking a step back and looking at the blueprints I had helped create. By reflecting on these, I synthesized 30 hours of blueprinting sessions on 4 scenarios of client services and internal processes into a handful of key moments and core principles that would speak to the heart of MERGE Insights’ vision.

Following that initial overall reflection, I then began methodically reviewing each category of note and grouping like-kind themes together, then tying each of those to an owner and providing a likely next step where possible (i.e. where one had been identified)

Crop from a Miro document where I synthesized each blueprinted scenario into their respective key moments and from those, MERGE’s core priorities. This helped me glean from hundreds of notes a handful of top priorities that mattered most to MERGE’s vision of itself and how it wants its services to be provided.
Zoomed out view of numerous amalgamated blueprint categories (e.g. touchpoints, roles, processes, systems, policies, potential pitfalls, questions, and general planning) organized with next step owners identified and notes on next steps to take
A zoomed in view on the ‘potential pitfalls’ category of accumulated notes across all blueprinted scenarios

More to come!

(and more to be refined)