Service Blueprints – Questions to Ask
Service blueprints are my favorite tool for facilitating discussion and analysis of a service, enabling teams to openly ask questions about how to improve a service’s design. Through the creation of current and future state service blueprints, they are also great for envisioning the possibilities of what the service can be.
Creating service blueprints are well worth the effort. Getting the most out of a service blueprint requires asking thoughtful questions that generate meaningful discussion among team members.
After creating a service blueprint, many questions come to my mind. Below is a list of starter questions that I like to ask to begin analyzing the output and determine where to go next to achieve positive outcomes.
Starter Questions for Service Blueprint Analysis
- What takes the most time?
- What should be added or removed to save time?
- What artifacts need designed as part of the service?
- What are the process steps?
- Are any steps missing or redundant?
- What costs are associated with the steps?
- Do processes and artifacts match how actors really work in real life?
- Can any steps be eliminated?
- Who is the persona interacting with?
- What does the persona need on their journey?
- What are the steps for the persona?
- What digital and analog technologies are being used?
- How well do technology touchpoints work today?
- What are the supporting actions and steps in the service?
- What rules and guidelines must be followed?
- What policies inform how the service is designed and why?
- Where do pain points occur?
- What are the impacts of pain points?
- What are the related costs of pain points (money, time, social)?
- How do we improve relationships, hand-offs, and communication?
- What moments are positive, negative, or high emotion? How can we design for them?
- What opportunities are there to improve the service?
- What interactions need designed?
- How might we achieve desired actor outcomes in human behavior throughout the service?
- How might we test our service improvements and make iterations?
What Questions Do You Ask?
I’d love to hear more about what questions you like to ask in a service blueprint session. Send me a tweet @jamieumak.
Image Credits: Featured photo in this post is from Michelle Buchanan Photography.
Categories: Service Design
