Service Design and service blueprints

A Service Designer will help you visualise your whole service by starting with a service blueprint.

What a service blueprint is

A service blueprint is a visual map of your service. It shows how your service:

• interacts with your users
• meets user and business needs
• integrates with other services

Service Designers create the blueprint by:

• running workshops with teams like policy and operations to understand your organisation's needs
• participating in user research to understand what your users need
• reviewing your business case to identify key business and policy goals

How a service blueprint helps you meet business and user needs

Your organisation’s needs and your users' needs may not always align. You'll also face time, resource, and budget challenges when building your service.

Defining your Minimum Viable Service (MVS) helps balance these demands. Your MVS is the smallest version of your service that:

• allows all users to complete their tasks
• meets your organisation’s goals
• can be delivered on time and within budget

Your service blueprint will include the minimum build needed to meet both user and buiness needs - your MVS.

If some features are not part of your MVS, you should track them in a design backlog. Aim to deliver these features during alpha or beta if you can, or as part of continuous improvement once your service is live if you cannot. 

Designing your service 

During discovery, Service Designers will collaborate with:

• Interaction and Content Designers
• User Researchers

Together, they will turn your service blueprint into a prototype of your service.

Using agile events to stay on track

Because the work of user-centred designers (UCD), including Service Designers, involves gathering, discussing and interpreting insights, their tasks do not always directly result in an element of your service being built. This can make tasks harder to track as they do not always have a tangible output. 

Holding regular agile events across your whole team is essential to help track UCD tasks.

You should also hold regular UCD-led events, such as 'Insights to Action' sessions, to make sure key team members are engaged in:

• turning user insights into deliverable tasks
• checking how user insights fit with business and policy needs

Digital Scotland Service Standard (DSSS)

Service Designers will work with User Researchers, Content and Interaction Designers to make sure a service is delivered that meets DSSS.

Service and user-centred design is particularly key in meeting criteria 1-5 of DSSS.