Service Blueprints as Planification & Alignment Tools

How designers can bring clarity to decision-makers

Service Blueprints are notorious for improving the user experience. In the case of a larger-scale project, this tool can act as a map for alignment and coordination between various initiatives. This is a function few tools currently provide for decision-makers.

In this article, we first discuss how the service blueprint could be a useful tool for strategic planning and project coordination. We then highlight tangible activities at the lines of interaction, visibility and internal interaction that can help a design researcher better map the ecosystem and identify possibilities for program evaluations.

Quality Improvement Project Scope

One way to help visualize the scope of possible work may be:

• Use of transparency for existant vs non-existant activities within the flow
• Use of colors for deployment/phase prioritization, or to identify readiness
• Use of stickers or shape layer for “moments of truth”, representing opportunities for metrics-development (quality improvement dashboards)

This diagram comes from a program evaluation we conducted for a local children’s hospital. We map the existing processes with high opacity, and show “the missing pieces” with low opacity. We use a grey scale instead of colors, to ease information digestion. In the project planning phase, this same diagram could incorporate colors to visually assess readiness across departments and activities.

This consolidated view of activities across the ecosystem is highly valuable for organizations…