Strategic Design + Service Design
Co-creating the foundations
Service Roadmap design for the planning and execution of a digital solution for migraine patients in Latin America.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have ommited and altered confidential information of some case studies. All information in this website is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations I worked with.
Context
This was my first project as a Service Designer in Globant. I was appointed only for the discovery and strategy phase, meaning I had only 3 weeks to create my main deliverable: a service roadmap.
By the time the project started, the technological solution had already been thought up by the client: a digital touchpoint for migraine patients. I cannot disclosure the project in depth due to my NDA.
My role consisted in understanding, mapping and visualizing the necessary definitions in order to facilitate the collaborative creation of a roadmap. This roadmap would become the tool to help guide the team in the construction of the MVP. The UX Analyst would be the one in charge of fostering a user-centered approach after the discovery phase.
Part of the in-house team. The rest of the participants are not shown due to my NDA.
Challenge
Because this project happened during COVID, all of the team interactions were remote, as well as the workshops I decided to conduct to achieve my main deliverable. This provided an extra level of difficulty.
Moreover, because of the confidentiality of the solution, the client asked that we don’t interview or talk to any patients. For that reason, I had to rely on previous studies and the client’s team’s definitions.
Deriverables
Value proposition canvas, Actors map, Users definition, Service Value definition, Experience principles, Success Criteria (goals), Service Roadmap.
Impact
The team was aligned under one common strategy and roadmap that specified the requirements for IT and business without losing the user perspective.
Complementary definitions were also delivered to the team to provide answers for the possible questions that could come up during development.
The MVP was successfully developed.
Process
Pre-discovery
Problem and context analysis
Process design
Discovery
Discovery Plan
Obstacles
Market and desk research
Expert interview
Workshop 1: goals
Workshop 2: actors mapping
Definition
Research conclusions
Research Presentation
Ideation
Workshop 3: Service Blueprint
Workshop 4: Service Roadmap
Implementation
Final roadmap
Final thoughts
What I learned
Pre-discovery
Problem and content analysis
I had two different kick-off meetings for this project. One with one of the Studio’s Design Directors to understand the expectations for my role and the context for said expectations.
The other one was with the appointed team that would work on the solution.
Notes from meeting.
Takeaways from the meetings
- The company had near-term, mid-term and long-term expected outcomes.
- The strategic goal of the company was to improve the early diagnosis and treatment for migraine.
- My responsibility was to land the team’s ideas into a specific order that would let them accomplish their goals progressively.
Process design
My design approach is process-based. This means that instead of focusing on designing the results, I learned to allocate my efforts on the design of the process. I’ve validated time and time again that this allows you to produce more quality work in a shorter amount of time. Because I was only appointed to the project for 3 weeks, sticking to this motto was vital.
Goals and outcomes
Every plan should start with goals. That is why I first enlisted the objectives for the stages I proposed within the order of a design thinking framework. To do so, I thought about my final deliverable and worked backwards.
Afterwards, I determined the actions for each phase. They become more and more synthetic as we reach the final deliverable.
Collaboration tools
Now that I had a roadmap for my own process, I took some time to choose, adapt and design the visual thinking tools I planned to use in each workshop. This required me to define each workshop’s goals beforehand.
I used Miro as my prototyping tool because it was easily accesible for the rest of the team.
Discovery
Discovery plan
From the pre-discovery phase we had one main takeaway: we needed to design how the patient would get to the first touchpoint of the service. Without that, there was no success possible.
To achieve this, we had to understand the complete experience starting from the diagnosis, their current episodes, their treatment and how they registered their pathology. The research was conducted with the UX Analyst.
Discovery goals
Research methodologies
Because of the type of data that we set out to gather, a qualitative method was fitting. Therefore, we decided on doing user interviews. Nevertheless, the reach of the proposed solution was so big that we chose to complement the interviews with a survey in order to be able to extrapolate the findings to infer an universe through quantitative data.
But wait…
We can’t talk
to the users?
In order to revise our plans with the client and have an approval to move forward, we met and explained our rationale for research.
The client surprised us by telling us that we couldn’t contact patients because of two main reasons. Firstly, they had previously conducted market research with another agency and believed to have enough data to work with. Secondly, the confidentiality of the project made them distrustful of interviews and surveys.
Notes from when we had to adapt our research goals to the available data.
Desk research and expert interview
For the desk research, we were provided with four resources: a survey that the company had conducted about the impact of migraine in the workplace; quick interviews they had conducted with specialists about the viability of the solution; a market research report that an agency had done for them and a film reel with a summary of interviews the agency had conducted with patients.
Additionally, we prepared a quick interview with one of the team’s experts, a neurologist specialized in migraine. The interview focused on one may topic, patient treatment. Said topic was explored with three different angles:
Main findings
Pain points
Before treatment
They feel frustrated because they have to go to multiple practitioners to define their diagnosis while managing their symptoms.
In treatment
They find unsatisfying the information provided by practitioners because their desinterst about the emotional implications the disease is having in their lives.
Questions
Before treatment
How to define whether they’re experiencing migraine and the effectiveness of the recommended treatments.
In treatment
They wondered which is the best treatment for them. The patients who couldn’t talk with their doctors, used the Internet for answers.
Needs
Before treatment
Being able to talk to a specialist
whenever they needed to because of the spontaneous nature of their illness.
In treatment
To have more psychological and emotional support because they want to feel that their opinion regarding the impact of the treatment on their daily life is being heard.
Conclusions
All of the findings were summarized in conclusions that could guide further development and decisions.
Discovery workshops
Goals and vision setting workshop
As a service designer, I had to not only understand the final user’s experience but also the expectations, motivations and objectives of the company. Without said understanding, it wouldn’t be possible to align the user’s experience with the service delivery.
Participants
In-house team
- Ssr. UX Analyst
- Business Analyst
Client’s team
- Product Manager
- Innovation Manager
- IT Project Manager
- Expert: neurologist
Goals Settings
objectives
- Understand why this project will be done.
- Define what problem or need we set out to solve.
- Quickly map who are involved in the project.
- Understand how the current situation could influence our expected outcomes.
Product vision board objectives
- Define who we think our objective users are.
- Define what value the product gives these users.
- Define how and why the product is different.
- Define how the product benefits the company’s goals.
Actors mapping workshop
Right after the first workshop, it was time to start adding layers of complexity to the service understanding and expected delivery. Now, we needed to define the key actors involved and their distance to the patient.
Participants
In-house team
- Ssr. UX Analyst
- Business Analyst
Client’s team
- Product Manager
- Innovation Manager
- IT Project Manager
- Expert: neurologist
Workshop objectives
- Define the moments’ outcomes and success criteria.
- To link the patient’s needs with the service objectives.
Discover and define the key actors. - Define the distance between the patient and key actors.
Map's zones
- Frontstage: zone of interaction with the patient.
- Backstage: zone that’s non visible for the patient.
- Support processes: zone of internal interaction between actors.
Definition
Discovery presentation
Before moving onto ideation, the UX Analyst and myself presented our conclusions to the team. Because one of our main concerns was how to share the knowledge in a way that would be useful, easy to understand and could stand the test of time, we designed visual deliverables.
User Research deliverables
Journey Map developed by the UX Designer of the team.
Service design deliverables: decision artifacts
As for me, I debriefed all of the definitions we reached through the first two workshops and started sketching how I wanted my deliverables to look like.
Approaching strategy as a designer means sketching and prototyping all deliverables.
The deliverables
This reality made me put extra effort in the visual design of my deliverables. My main concern was that I was not going to be there for when the built knowledge was going to be put to use.
The deliverables are blurred to comply with my NDA.
Ideation
Ideation workshops
Service Blueprinting workshops
After we were all aligned behind the most important definitions for the service, we started crafting how it should work. In order to do so, I used a Service Blueprint (to be) as a tool for collaboration.
We proposed a Cutomer Journey to be and started filling the layers.
Participants
In-house team
- Ssr. UX Analyst
- IT Analysts (3)
- Business Analyst
Client’s team
- Product Manager
- Innovation Manager
- IT Project Manager
- Expert: neurologist
Goals Settings objectives
- To define how the desired patient experience should be for the MVP with a Customer Journey (to be) that includes the user’s objectives per moment and their actions.
- To define the touchpoints between the patient and the service for each moment as well as the user’s input and the system’s output.
- To map out the processes that would support the service in each moment.
- With all of the aforementioned, to prototype a service concept in accordance to the definitions from the first two workshops.
- To discover possible frictions and opportunities.
Service Roadmapping workshop
Using the service blueprint as a baseline, we met one last time to define the what, how and why of the development initiatives and stages.
I designed the visualization for the blueprint and left empty gaps in the sections we needed to complete in the final workshop.
Participants
In-house team
- Ssr. UX Analyst
- IT Analysts (3)
- Business Analyst
Client’s team
- Product Manager
- Innovation Manager
- IT Project Manager
- Expert: neurologist
Goals Settings objectives
Why
- Define the users’ objectives and needs to be satisfied with each development stage.
- Define success criteria for each development.
What
- Define the development stages (MPV, evolution 1, evolution 2 and so on).
- Define features to be built in each development stage.
- Define periods of revision and iteration.
How
- Define estimated development time frames.
- Define ownership and dependencies for each development.
Implementation
Final
Roadmap
Going through the workshop annotations, decision artifacts and definitions was a very complex but rewarding process that allowed me to help the team envision a project that would would evolve to an omnichannel service for migraine patients.
In this project, the possibility to talk to users was off the table. To sort this challenge out, I restored to secondary research and designed four different workshops in order to build the product’s roadmap collaboratively. After going through goals, users’ characteristics and their customer journeys, I compiled everything in stand-alone deliverables as well as a service blueprint. With these, I facilitated one last workshop to create the final roadmap that allowed the team to envision and structure a project that would would evolve from a simple chatbot to an omnichannel service for migraine patients.
The last layer was filled with the recommended stages of development.
I was told by one of the team members that the development of the MVP was successful and that they were working on the next versions of the service.
All this work
deserves a bigger screen!
Because of the length of the case studies, I have adapted them for mobile and tablet. If you want to read the complete case study, head over to desktop.