If you’ve been following along with my research work at all, you’ll know its been going a while. The final thing I needed to write up was a reflection on my experience. As someone who likes to get value out of things I write (and I actually have some time, because we’re away without the kids) I thought I’d heavily edit sections and share something.

Its been nearly a decade since I started out on this journey (2016-2025), and lots of my reflections speak to the challenges and opportunities encountered because of the length of time elapsed. That includes the evolution of my own understanding, the impact of changing jobs on the research, and the broader shifts in design practice over this time.

This post kicks off with my experiences doing service design prototyping in different work contexts. 👋 Past and present colleagues, nothing too controversial I don’t think.

Service design in different contexts

Over the 9 years I’ve worked in three different orgs, in different roles. Each one gave a new different perspective on service design practice. Whilst I saw a lot of consistent service design principles – particularly the commitment to user-centered design – I saw a big mix of familiarity with different methods, theoretical grounding, and practical constraints with which designers worked.

Academic adjacent design

My first role as part of a design team and service design came working at PDR, working closely with academic researchers. This meant conversations about design and prototyping methods often centred around the theory that underpinned them, as well as reflecting on methodological rigour (although in many ways being less precious than you might expect about this). This is where I discovered more nuanced understanding of  prototyping e.g. mixed fidelity and different design research approaches.

It was also where I first built out what I’d describe as service prototypes, going beyond individual product touch points to replicate service experiences.

Corporate Design Context

After 7 years in different roles at PDR, I moved to Co-op’s new Customer Experience Strategy Team. Here I was part of a larger design team made up of different design specialists working on primarily digital products – in contrast to PDR where I was part of a smaller generalist team working across products and services. Given this was the first time I was labelled as a ‘service designer’, amongst other design specialisms, I felt it was important to be able to articulate service design’s specific value within that multidisciplinary context.

I found I relied on a lot of the foundations from my previous role and the research work to establish credibility and articulate service design’s role within the broader design community. At the same time, the experience of working with different specialisms like product management, content design and delivery management pushed me to pragmatically apply and communicate the theory to those without a design background.

I also saw that for some of the design team, their experience was almost entirely related to digital design work, and therefore digital prototypes. This meant that designers could rapidly create high-fidelity digital prototypes with design systems. However, they were less comfortable with prototyping non-digital service elements, such as physical spaces, objects or non-tangible aspects of services. 

Before I left the Co-op, I was leading design for in-store retail technology. Because all the technology was used in a known physical space, often being carried around by colleagues as they stacked shelves, or checked products, it was possible to explore prototypes that included all aspects of the service rather than just the digital interfaces.

For example, when tasked with developing new self service kiosk tills, as a team we planned and built cardboard prototypes of self service checkouts within an internal test store environment. I was able to start seeing the potential impact of the research, whilst it was still being developed. If nothing else, it was clear that design teams valued the freedom and creativity that came from being encouraged to try out other prototyping approaches, rather than entirely digital tools.

Digital Transformation Context

Moving to PD presented different challenges in translating service design principles to organisational change contexts. The slightly abstract nature of transformation work requires different approaches to prototyping. Rather than focusing on customer facing products and services, the emphasis shifted to prototyping organisational processes and change strategies.

I wrote a bit more about this already in this blog post, so won’t repeat it here.

Working in this new environment also gave another opportunity to explore appropriate methods of communicating the research work to a different audience. In this case, it was a mix of experienced design practitioners and digital generalists who were interested in design. When presenting the work as part of a Community of Practice session, I introduced a section where other participants were encouraged to share their experiences of prototyping. Many shared experience from previous roles, and this resulted in a really wide range of prototyping stories, which inspired and surprised other colleagues, providing real value and building relationships, as well as confidence around design practice.

The value of hands on experience

Across these contexts, I observed that designers with the most sophisticated understanding of prototyping often had backgrounds in physical product design or maintained creative practices outside their professional work. This suggests that hands-on experience with tangible design work enhances understanding of abstract service prototyping concepts. Through the community of practice sessions it was also evident that enabling people to explore the physical act of making, enabled deeper conversations about prototyping, even when that prototyping is for intangible services. 

Prototyping sensitive services

Across all contexts, one of the biggest challenges that has made me reflect on the role of prototyping within the design process is when designing particularly traumatic or sensitive services. Whilst all professions – especially service design – aim to prevent services providing a negative experience, there are still services that people wouldn’t choose to use if they didn’t have to, but are often necessary.

For example the process of registering a family member’s death, undergoing treatment such as chemotherapy, experiencing major surgery, or services provided to abuse survivors. Designing services such as these raises ethical considerations about user involvement, and therefore conventional prototyping approaches.

The ethical implications of asking individuals to engage with and provide feedback on prototype services in traumatic contexts requires careful consideration. My research into mixed-fidelity prototyping offers potential solutions, suggesting ways to control the fidelity of the human interactions (the type of users involved) while maintaining prototype validity. However it remains a challenge to design, prototype and test services that people will always associate with possibly traumatic experiences.

The potential consequences of poorly designed services in these contexts make prototyping even more valuable. Adopting mixed fidelity prototyping approaches, whilst working with participants who understand the value of their contribution could prevent others from experiencing the negative impact of poorly designed service experiences. 

Whilst not providing all the answers, the mixed fidelity framework can support designers to have in-depth conversations about the approach to prototyping this type of services. 

If this didn’t bore you to tears, I’m hoping to write up the next section as well…which will touch on how much changed professionally over the 9 years, as well what stayed the same.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if anything resonates with you.