Overview
The client offers online medical license renewal and continuing education credits. The course creation process is labor intensive, expensive and utilizes spreadsheets and emails to manage each step. The team of three cannot produce more than 2-3 courses at any given time and each course take up to 6 months to produce.
The Client
The client is a small east coast based consulting organization focused supporting the integration of new technologies and services. This project is protected under NDA. Client names and certain details are being withheld.
Goals
1. Double the number of courses offered by Q4 2023.
2. Streamline the course creation process and help the company reach stretch revenue goals.
3. Design a collaborative but efficient experience for the instructor to prepare and teach course materials with minimal help from client.
2. Streamline the course creation process and help the company reach stretch revenue goals.
3. Design a collaborative but efficient experience for the instructor to prepare and teach course materials with minimal help from client.
My Contributions
Through my journey mapping and blueprinting process, the team was able to organize and summarize each of the steps and drill down into details both from a business and customer journey view. This took several rounds of discussion and negotiation. Guiding the team to this point was a win!
My Role
Service Designer
Service Designer
Skills
Negotiation, story telling, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving
Negotiation, story telling, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving
Methodology
Design Thinking
Process
In-depth interviews, online journey map workshop, service blueprint workshop
Design Thinking
Process
In-depth interviews, online journey map workshop, service blueprint workshop
Deliverables
Mind map, experience map, journey map, service blueprint
Mind map, experience map, journey map, service blueprint
Tools
Figma, Miro, Teams
Figma, Miro, Teams
Year
2022-2023
2022-2023
Research
The initial approach focused on deep understanding of the current process. I conducted interviews with the stakeholders to understand the role in the course creation process.
I identified and summarized the six phases and created a Mindmap to better understand how the information is shared and managed:
.
Journey Map
I created the initial Journey Map (otherwise called Experience Map) based on the current experience. Multiple roles were identified including the manager, coordinator, instructor and all stakeholders. The journey map identified the labor required for each step.
Opportunities
The Journey Map helped identify the area of focus.
- How can we streamline the course content creation phase? (40% of total effort)
- How can we streamline the video production phase? (35% of total effort)
If we could reduce the intensive manual labor of these two phases, we could likely reduce the total effort (time) to launch a new course.
Less labor means more courses which means more revenue.
Service Blueprint
I focused the Service Blueprint on phases that represented 75% of the total effort. The team was very confident that with the right technology and design, a new solution could make an impact.
Revised Service Blueprint
As the ideas was further developed, my revised blueprint focused heavily on the Backstage employee actions.
The UX/UI designer was engaged to take the idea to the next level.
Challenges and Key Learnings
Journey Maps and Blueprints require patience and time. Building out these documents require thought, analysis and problem solving which occurs when I have time to process.
The team was made up of highly opinionated individuals and negotiation was necessary to agree on the organization of the phases and steps for the journey map/service design process. Each member had a different perspective of how the phases should be organized (influenced by their own roles). At times, we disagreed and resolved these disagreements by setting aside the sticking points and returning later.
This was the first time the team had experienced a formal process of service design ideation and needed individual time to process.
Also worth noting, the software evaluation process was time consuming and often the team was stuck in the weeds. This became a roadblock and was resolved when the technical product manager took steps to steer the team back on track. The takeaway from this experience is that it is so important to identify and invite the key stakeholders.
Other takeaways:
- There are many software packages/solutions that focus on one thing and others that focus on multiple solutions. Both types of software cost money for users and the size of the solution needed. It can be challenging during the evaluation process without clear direction about the most important priorities.
- For some teams, it is necessary to communicate the steps of service design to teams before and during projects so the team understands. Without this knowledge, the team may flounder and disagreements may become roadblocks.
