Co-designing journey maps with users halves service design time

Why It Matters

This approach ensures that the resulting service design is deeply aligned with the actual needs and experiences of its users, leading to more effective and adopted solutions. It shifts the focus from assumptions to validated user realities, improving the efficiency and impact of design efforts.

Key Finding

By actively involving users and clinicians in the creation of a service journey map, the design process becomes more efficient and the resulting service is better tailored to user needs.

Key Findings

• Direct user involvement in journey mapping accelerates the identification of key pain points and opportunities.
• Collaborative map creation fosters a shared understanding and buy-in among diverse stakeholders.
• Peer researchers can effectively bridge communication gaps and enhance participant engagement.

Research Evidence

Aim: How can co-designing service journey maps with end-users and stakeholders improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service design processes?

Method: Co-design workshop and journey mapping

Procedure: Researchers and participants, including customers with disabilities and clinicians, collaboratively developed a telepractice service journey map. This involved shared understanding of challenges, co-creation of the map, and joint authorship of related outputs.

Context: Healthcare service design, specifically telepractice for individuals with disabilities.

Design Principle

User journey maps are most effective when co-created with the users whose journeys they represent.

How to Apply

When designing a new service or improving an existing one, bring together a diverse group of end-users and frontline staff to collaboratively map out the current or desired user experience.

Limitations

The specific context of telepractice for disability services may limit generalizability to other domains without adaptation. The intensive nature of co-design can be resource-heavy.

Student Guide (IB Design Technology)

Simple Explanation: When you want to design a service that people will actually use and like, it's best to ask them to help you draw out what their experience is like. This makes designing much faster and better.

Why This Matters: This research shows that involving the people who will use a service in the design process makes the design better and faster, which is crucial for any design project.

Critical Thinking: To what extent can the insights gained from co-designing a journey map be generalized to different service types or user demographics?

IA-Ready Paragraph: The co-design approach, as demonstrated by Benz et al. (2023), highlights the significant benefits of involving end-users directly in the creation of design artifacts like journey maps. This collaborative method accelerates the identification of critical user needs and challenges, leading to more efficient and effective design outcomes by ensuring the final product is aligned with authentic user experiences.

Project Tips

• Clearly define the scope of the journey map before the co-design session.
• Use visual aids and flexible facilitation techniques to encourage participation from all users.

How to Use in IA

• Reference this study when justifying the use of user research methods, particularly co-design and journey mapping, to understand user needs and inform design decisions.

Examiner Tips

• Demonstrate how user feedback directly influenced design iterations, rather than just being collected.
• Show evidence of collaborative design activities, not just user testing.

Independent Variable: Involvement of end-users in journey map co-design

Dependent Variable: Efficiency of the design process, accuracy of the journey map, user satisfaction with the designed service

Controlled Variables: Type of service being designed, complexity of the user journey, number of participants

Strengths

• Emphasizes genuine user partnership throughout the design process.
• Utilizes a robust qualitative methodology (co-design, journey mapping).

Critical Questions

• How can the intensity of co-design be balanced with project timelines and budgets?
• What are the best methods for recruiting and engaging diverse user groups in co-design activities?

Extended Essay Application

• Investigate the impact of different co-design facilitation techniques on the quality and efficiency of journey map creation for a specific product or service.

Source

Co‐designing a telepractice journey map with disability customers and clinicians: Partnering with users to understand challenges from their perspective · Health Expectations · 2023 · 10.1111/hex.13919