Your service is not a blueprint

In the world of service design, blueprints are held up like an oracle, high-mighty and beyond reproach. Pretty funny, given it’s such a hectic chunk of information.

Too often, service designers see the delivery of a blueprint as then end of their work, rather than the beginning. But anything that dense and complex needs a lot of work to become useful.

First step is to translate it into things people can actually comprehend. A story, a vivid moment, a human experience or an interaction that people involved with the service actually “get”. Frankly, that’s the easy bit.

Then, if you’ve set up a target-state or future-state blueprint, it’s time to get in the trenches and make the slow, sometimes-painful, but ultimately impactful progress towards the service that’s been envisaged. That might mean convening teams and letting them put their own stamp on it; Writing up business cases to make this thing real; Sifting through the operational details to uncover ever-more challenges to implementing your almighty blueprint. You know, the hard work.

As budgets tighten and the mystique of HCD diminishes, service design means nothing without service delivery. So look at your blueprint as the map for doing the difficult work, not the icing on the cake.