Because of Arbisoft's rapid growth in the past couple of years, the existing project estimation process caused problems such as inaccurate timelines, misallocation of resources, and mismatched expectations, leading to client dissatisfaction. I saw this as an opportunity to work in service design and initiated an internal company project to document, research, and improve the company's business generation process.
Using Service Design to Create Organizational Impact
Project Objective
Role: Documentation, Research, User Interviews, User Testing
Getting a Direction
Interviews, Interviews, Interviews
The first step was to conduct unstructured, in-depth conversations with stakeholders involved in this process to better understand how things are currently happening and where problems may arise.
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Pictures 1 and 2: Making sense of the system by speaking with key stakeholders.
Setting Scope
After conducting several interviews (2 of which are shown above), we developed a list of goals and actors to create a project scope.
Mapping the System
Next, we created a service design to better understand where pain points were. The original service designs were for two types of clients (technical and non-technical), but we decided to focus on non-technical clients for the time being since they had the greatest problems and were more willing to try improvements.
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Narrowing Down
Feedback
Once our service design was completed, we spoke with our actors again to get their feedback and discuss possible improvements.
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How can design help?
Additionally, we realized that design consultants might be a valuable addition in the future to the process and identified possible areas where they could be embedded.
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Pilot Liftoff!
Real Time Testing
Following our discussions with actors involved in the business generation process and our research, we developed a service design with suggested improvements, specifically for the People Operations department. We also explained why we should embed a designer, and after numerous discussions with executives, people operations and sales, we piloted our service design on three business generation leads, of which two became clients. As a result of the positive changes noted by the actors in the process, the service design has now been implemented company-wide. With our success with non-technical client RFP's (Request For Proposals), we are now focusing on solving this problem for technical client RFP's.
Key Learnings
Understanding Service Design
This project deepened my understanding of service design and its potential to improve workflows. I learned to implement the double diamond model, starting with broad research through unstructured calls, synthesizing that information to create a scope, and then researching various design interventions. We chose one to test and implement as part of our research.
Presenting Findings Effectively
I also developed the skills to present findings to stakeholders, helping them understand the value of the proposed solution. This experience was invaluable in refining my ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively.
