USAA
Above: This was a was mid-fidelity design of the service blueprint for the Corporate ID Badge. Personnel interviews, usage analytics, vendor feedback, and discussions with HR and Compliance were part of the research before we ever considered the visual design.
Above: I illustrated a simple experience of arriving at work, buying coffee and lunch using my badge. This was only one use case among many that we documented. Depending on the role, experiences differed, and access to various areas on campus was impacted.
Above: I led a service blueprint workshop assisted by my fellow teammates.
Above: We had 5 of these service blueprint boards completed at the end of the workshop. We documented our findings across all stages of the service blueprint - from the Customer Journey, FrontStage interactions with personnel, BackStage interactions with software or systems not visible to personnel, and Support processes that were needed.
Above: We consolidated all 20+ use cases and drafted recommendations and had pivotal stakeholder review and provide feedback. Once we had buy in, we started designing a low-fidelity blueprint.
Above: Parallel to documenting use cases, we started to documenting knowns that surfaced from our research. Strategically this helped us start getting our head around the design direction.
Above: Once I had buy in from stakeholders for areas of concentration, I moved up to low/mid-fidelity to start organizing the service blueprint.
Service Blueprint for ID Badge
In September 2019 I was given the opportunity to lead a service blueprint workshop that would include many USAA employees that worked in the security realm. Specifically the goal was to identify all the current uses for the company identification badge, and what could the future state of the badge become.
Documenting Use Cases
We documented over 20+ use cases for the badge; from a visual inspection by security guards, scanning them at entrances, using them for access to workstations, to using them as a tool for commerce at the local cafeteria and store. In addition, the USAA badge had near a dozen variations for employees, contractors, executives, vendors, visitors, etc. Over 70k personnel working for or with USAA are affected by this badge each day.
But to determine how the badge should serve our needs in the future, we had to gather stakeholders to understand their points of view and expectations. As much as we explored “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this [task] with the badge?”, we also uncovered some privacy and security issues that prohibited what we could do in the short term. This helped us strategize and focus our recommendations.
Telling A Story
As part of our research we interviewed and observed several subject matter expert on how they use the badge. This included sharing the steps needed to complete each task, no matter how insignificant it might seem on the surface. We learned that something as simple as a physical badge could mean different things to different people depending on what their role was.
In order to make recommendations on visual design and function, we had to understand the consequences of making a design change. This included data storage within the badge, and the abilities of internal security systems to read the badge. We engaged stakeholders who would most be affected by change, and made them part of the solution. At the end of a 4 month engagement, we standardized a set of recommendations that acted as a guide for the group responsible for purchasing the badges, software, and hardware. They now were armed with information that took all function of the USAA badge into consideration and felt confident in making the right choice to meet the corporate need.