Service Design Blueprints enable designers to go beyond the user journey. Illustrating what is happening at every stage of a user’s journey, including the actions a user can see and the work going on behind the scenes that they can’t. This makes Service Design Blueprints extremely important when designing complex products with multiple moving parts. The ability to consider what actions employees of a service will need to take, automated actions, and artificial intelligence is key in designing an effective modern service. It also enables adequate consideration of what technologies will need to be put in place to make the service viable.
Similar to what I did with my User Journey Maps, I initially wanted to start by creating a Service Design Blueprint for the current Adult Autism Diagnosis service. This would enable me to assess and highlight the pain points and blockers users face today. This would be key to ensuring I uncover all the opportunities for improvement and include them within my proposed service design.
I started by looking for existing Service Design Blueprints, which I could use as guides for layout and the content I needed to include. I found it challenging to find any real examples online, with most guides to Service Design Blueprints using illustrative examples and often these examples were for basic services such as food delivery. The only useful example I found was for Uber, and even this lacked the detail I wanted my version to cover.
To get me started, I used this template available on Miro. I realised I would need to modify it to my own needs, but it was a useful starting point to help me consider what aspects of the service I needed to consider.
My initial attempt was a little messy, but it got all the information I needed down on paper for the first time. This gave me a chance to consider the areas where improvements were possible and start to consider where I had gaps in my information. At this point, I was also able to show this first attempt to my major project supervisor, María, for feedback. This proved incredibly useful as she showed me ways I could present my information more clearly and how to improve how it looked visually.
Using María’s advice, I removed areas of the blueprint that were not relevant to my work. I had marked areas that were pain points and blockers for people using the service. I marked these using stickers available in Miro; this was useful for me to see visually, but it is not the most professional way to illustrate the issues.
María suggested colour coding my service design blueprint using orange for pain points and red for blockers. I also gave each issue a number which could be matched up with the notes at the bottom of the blueprint for more information about the issue. These improvements and another pass to double-check I had everything covered left me with the Service Design Blueprint for the current service you see below.
I was very pleased with the final result, and I felt it was an accurate representation of the current service and the issues present within it. Seeing all the opportunities represented like this showed me how much impact my product could have, which validated my decision to tackle the adult autism diagnosis pathway for my major project. It also enabled me to start to develop ideas to tackle these issues. I realised quite quickly that some of these issues would be outside my remit to change. For example, the service would benefit from more specialist staff, but I have no way to make this happen with a digital product. Therefore, I decided on two key goals for my product: to put people using the service in control of their diagnosis journey, and to use technology to lighten the workload of specialist staff as much as possible.
Creating this service design blueprint made me look at the service in more detail and from more angles and perspectives than the other artefacts I have created. It has given me deep insight into the service and what I can do to improve it through the product I will create.
Now that I had a completed service design blueprint for the current service, it was time to develop a similar blueprint for the improved service I am proposing. I decided to take the lessons from the blueprints I had created to develop a template for my proposed blueprints. I knew that I would likely need to create multiple versions of my proposed service design blueprints as I developed my idea further and received feedback from the people I showed it to. By creating a template at the start, I ensured all versions would have the same visual style and deliver information in the same format, enabling changes between versions to be compared.
I was now able to create the first Service Design Blueprint for my proposed idea. The main improvement I am proposing is to use AI or automated systems for tasks currently handled manually. Another improvement was that the user would be part of every step of the process, unlike currently, where there are long periods where they have no idea or input into what is happening with their diagnostic journey.