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
  • Develop research-based personas
  • Define scenarios, phases, steps
  • Identify roles present in scenarios
  • 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; x2/x4/x6)
  • Hold initial blueprinting sessions on a “simple” scenario [Blind Date?] (in-progress)
  • Determine, invite additional workshop participants [maybe the plumber for a tradesperson? G on the customer-side?] (pending)
  • Harvest blueprints; RACI charting, develop action plan, KPIs (pending)

Process – Prep work & 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.
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

TheyDo as a candidate platform for some or all of my persona development, journey mapping, and service blueprinting

I initially considered Miro and Figma for my blueprinting workshops due to their ease of use when creating custom blueprints and facilitating remote collaboration, then also considered TheyDo after a strong testimonial.

TheyDo required that notes of a given category be organized in a horizontal lane instead of allowing an ad hoc accumulation in a step’s vertical column.

This went against the approach I wanted to adopt for this project (to visually represent more complex steps with taller columns of notes across relevant categories), so I focused on Figma and Miro for my blueprinting work.

I adopted TheyDo for persona development and journey mapping, however, since it’s an effective tool for creating and sharing that content.

Figma as my tool of choice for remote collaborative blueprinting

After also evaluating Miro and TheyDo, I decided to use Figma’s Figjam due to its freedom of fully custom blueprinting and simple remote collaboration interface from the perspective of remote blueprinting workshop participants who aren’t regular users of this software.

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.

More to come!

(and more to be refined)