Service Design is one of the most interesting activities of my current job. It allows me to use tools that designers would earlier use for creative activities into solving business issues.
Another interesting aspect of Service Design is how it provides a variety of techniques for solving these issues. From a concept map to a script of the user’s journey, anything is possible if it means getting the expected results. The greatest benefit you can get from Service Design is its summarizing capability, it transforms complex contexts into understandable flows, and issues in paths of solutions.
Client: Bayer
Audience: 12 members from the commercial team
Duration: 2 days
Objective: Review the contract process
- Steps:
- Description of a typical day in the commercial team
- Process Concept Map
- New value proposition
- Brainstorm
- Prototype
- Evaluation
- Decoup
Abstract
The goal in this activity was to clearly see how employees from different regions in Brazil did their hiring process and to analyze the possibility of making it digital.
On the first day we mapped a typical day in the commercial team, this way I could understand the different contexts of each participant. That information was later useful to format a commercial team persona.
On the second day we mapped the hiring process journey using cards. The cards represented the steps established by the company, some empty cards were also available in case participants wanted to insert more steps into the journey. Participants had to compromise and agree on which order they would place each step. They were also asked to describe who and how would execute each one of the steps, which were the risks involved and how long it would take.
After mapping there was a new value proposition session where participants had to come up with ideas for the solution and afterwards brainstorm on the selected idea. That done, participants were asked to prototype their proposition using a storyboard and at the end of each participant presented their final product to the team.
The team evaluated every proposition according to criteria previously set by themselves, meanwhile I took notes on their comments, pros and cons. I later did the decoupage of the content and used excel graphs to present all of the results from the activity to them.
Pre-work
The job started out by collecting registers of how the process was being done. It was also taken in consideration who were the focal people in different touch points of the activity, from the commercial to the legal department. Besides that, there were remote interviews with people from different regions of Brazil in order to have full coverage of how the process was running.
Further on I gathered several information on how the daily flow of the process happened across the country. As I started to have a clear view of the whole process, I decoup the information to present on an exploratory meeting with the responsible team. That being settled, we met with the regions’ representatives for a co-creation session.
Teamwork
The workshop began by mapping out a ‘typical day’ of the people present at the meeting. The idea was to understand the specificities of each daily life, to know how they commute to work, which were their frequent demands, as well as their extraordinary demands, which were their habits, etc. My goal during this step was to understand how this group could benefit from a potential process automatization, taking these different work contexts into account.
Representatives from different Brazilian regions describing their daily life.
Process Concept Map
The second day of the workshop was followed by mapping the admission process. I had already prepared a high-level research during the previous steps, which speeded up the participants’ analysis. The process’ steps were shown in cards and that helped them to visualize and sort a flow timeline out.
This was the moment we were conceiving the process in the way it happened from different regions in Brazil.
Value proposition
After the participants came to an agreement on how the process actually used to happen, they went through a brainstorm session to think of how to get a better process. The new proposals had to show which was the desired value proposition. Therefore the participants used the value proposition canvas and indicated the benefits of their solution.
Brainstorming
Once the group had established which was the value they were looking for, they followed on with the “How might we?” exercise. This exercise’s objective was to transform fears and risks into opportunities.
During the brainstorm session participants were able to answer propositional questions and to present their ideas offhandedly.
We closed the session after at least one idea from each participant was presented and we selected one propositional question and a guidance to the next phase: prototype.
From the question ‘How might we?’ the group turned users pains and risks into potential opportunities.
Prototype
This was the moment when participants had to co-create and prototype.
On this step they were able to use the storyboard technique. This tool helped participants to tell how each of the solutions they came up with would work in real life. The illustration boards made it easier to understand.
Storyboards should, as a rule, have a detail level for a 5-year-old to understand, this means that at this point the participants didn’t have to worry about a large amount of details.
Participant presenting her storyboard.
Evaluation
All of the proposals were evaluated following pre-set criteria established by the participants themselves on the value proposition session. So, during the evaluation session every proposal would be judged on whether it met the criteria or not.
The proposals were presented one by one and at the end of the session we came to a consensus on which was the best of them, the one that met the highest number of criteria.
Criteria table for proposals evaluation.
Decoup
After the activity’s wrap up I had to proceed with the decoupage of all materials produced during the sessions. I first tabulated the results from the mapping session and then scanned every proposal with its pros and cons decided by the participants.
The product was delivered as a presentation containing the memory of the activity and the results report.
