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Blueprinting User Services�

Alliance DUX Days 2026

Beth Filar Williams, User Experience Research Librarian, OSU

Ian Scofield, Electronic Resources Team Manager, OSU

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Today’s Agenda

LEARN

We Will Explain What Blueprinting Is and Why It Matters

EXPERIENCE

You’ll Get To Try Out the Blueprinting Process

DISCUSS

Let’s Talk About Your Experience Trying the Blueprinting Process

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What is a service blueprint?

Service blueprints focus on a user’s journey for a need/a service, by adding in the service provider & behind the scenes steps.

It is a foundational document that outlines the underlying dependencies and requirements for a service. This single document is a very powerful tool in service design because it outlines both the onstage, or what is visible to the patron, and the offstage, what happens behind the scenes to perform or deliver a service.

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Blueprint template

Stage/Timing >>>>�

User Actions/Touchpoints

(Line of Interaction)�

Onstage

(Line of Visibility)��Offstage

(Line of Invisibility)�

Support/Other Units

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Blueprinting in action

EX: Instructor submits request for book for course

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Blueprinting in action, continued

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Miro Board Example

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PDF/Printed copy to share & post

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Why Is Blueprinting Valuable? Team Learning

Communication

Excitement for Beth’s Blueprinting for acq/ER team to map out our work
Previous re-org, Steven Sowell, process mapping, focused on laying out internal workflows and learning about each other's work across unit's , but fizzled out due to complexity, lack of structure and someone devoted to leading the work.
Was different than blueprinting because of lack of direct connection to actual impact on our users

My team was one of the first to blueprint - 2 sessions-print/electronic purchase requests
Went through our process steps, how they intersected with the patron's experience of communications from us, looked for gaps
Result - Pretty complete workflow, reinforced tight-knit team, learned about efficiency of our processes, also setup motivation to try cross-unit blueprints.

Full Thoughts

When I first heard that Beth was offering BluePrinting sessions for Teams and Units, I was excited to get my team onboard. Being part of the Acquisitions Unit as a staff member for 15 years and as the Unit Manager for the past 3+ years, I knew we had some complex workflows to map out. I recalled a similar exercise that our department went through when we re-orged with Circulation and Resource Sharing back in the early 2010’s. Our Department Head then, Steven Sowell, was trying to have us take on a similar task within each Unit so we could try to explain to the rest of the department the kind of work we each did. It was really about demonstrating the complexity of our work, our unique skillsets that we each brought, and just a general exercise in getting to know each other. But the task was too big to complete, it was a bit disorganized, and it was not fully underpinned with the unique aspect that really makes blueprinting effective: showing the connection of our work to the user experience.

I’ve had a few blueprint experiences with Beth over the past year, and members of my team shared even more experiences with a massive cross-departmental blueprinting session. The ER Unit had 2 different blueprinting sessions with Beth to lay out the steps involved in processing patron purchase requests: both for print and electronic items. We looked at the journey of the request from starting at its inception when the patron places the request through our form (or however else they try to reach out to us), the different steps we take to assess if we can fill the request or not, and how the item arrives and gets processed so that it can reach the requestor. I think one of the more impactful things we got to see with this process was all the points where we are communicating the request progress to the user. They really aren’t seeing anything we are doing behind the scenes, so any communication from us letting them know we are on it is really valuable to them. Overall, I think we found that we had a pretty complete workflow. I think doing this as a tight knit team is useful just to learn more about yourselves, document what you are doing and see it all laid out, but what helps even more is getting together across different teams to talk about a workflow across several areas.

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Why Is Blueprinting Valuable? Team Building

Community

Real blueprint value-ER troubleshooters met with infodesk troubleshooters
Talking through our perspectives led to ah ha’s, learning, modifying, re-evaluating
Found shared value - getting the patron access somehow

Results-new communication clues on urgency of request and need for follow-up
Alleviating gray areas and improved request prioritization on both sides
Various other units trying out blueprinting led to a larger meeting of several units

Full Thoughts

When members of my team (who do the e-resource troubleshooting) met with members of the Info Desk team (who respond to patron help requests), Blueprinting really began to show its value. As we talked through the process together from our perspectives, there were a few moments of ah ha, I didn’t know you did things that way, what if we updated our problem form to ask this question to the patron? why are we still doing that step? etc). We were able to come together around the common shared value that the most important aspect of solving the help request was to provide the patron with the resources they needed (whether its through an OA link, pointing them to Resource Sharing, suggesting they setup an appointment with a librarian to find alternate resources, or fixing the access problem). From our perspective, it was helpful to be able to explain to the InfoDesk staff that our main clue on the follow-up action and urgency of the request is on what they were able to do to provide access to the requestor. If truly the only way the requestor can get what they need is through our help to resolve the problem for them, it is critical that that outcome is spelled out in their message forwarding the request to us. The discussion kind of alleviated some gray areas because the InfoDesk staff can confirm more clearly whether they are truly needing a response from us or if they are just the messenger passing al.ong the problem. Then we can better prioritize which help requests need immediate attention versus which ones can take a lower priority.

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Why Is Blueprinting Valuable? Collaboration

Wholistic View

A larger meeting across multiple units looking at Course Reserves workflows-I was not there
Group split into print/electronic to simplify and focus, then groups came back together at end
Electronic-my team inspired to create alma widget that provided info on new ebooks

Print-my team saw additional info sent to them from course reserves and more consistent message delivery
Cataloging-relayed the complexity of their work and learned of some changes to Course Reserves processes, reinforced the need for clearer lines of communication
Course Reserves-Had such an invested perspective on Blueprinting, that they were actually a bit disappointed that there wasn’t enough time to work more on the holistic view

Full Thoughts

All of this culminated in a larger group meeting that I was not personally part of, but that has reaped some great benefits for cross-departmental work., Beth had a giant blueprinting season with staff from Course Reserves, Acquisitions, and Cataloging to talk about the variety of steps involved in filling a request to place an item on Course Reserves for a faculty member. The concept was so complicated and the group so diverse, the session was split into 2 different groups, 1 to focus on electronic resources and 1 to focus on print resources. From the conversations, my eresources team member was inspired to create a widget in Alma that listed all newly purchased ebook. Her goal was to help streamline the process for informing our student worker that a cataloger had finished processing more ebooks so they could regularly review the Course Reserves purchase tracking spreadsheet and add the Primo permalink. This piece of information would effectively signal to our Course Reserves group that Cataloging had finished its part and the book was ready to be passed along to the requesting instructor to use in their course. My print books team member found from her conversations that there was an opportunity for solidifying cross-departmental connections so that more people on both sides know who on the other side does specific steps. This ingrained in them a bit more the importance of communicating out progress on steps and notifications of new requests to all parties involved instead of just the ones they thought were the ones working on it. Also, her opinion of the blueprinting process as initially a dreadful chore flipped into really important piece of the puzzle for working across departments more effectively. At the very least it gives everyone a chance to see the bigger picture and learn how each person plays a series of different roles in the processes being mapped out.Talking with people from Course Reserves, they really had even higher expectations than the time allotted for the blueprinting session allowed. They were really interested to see a very holistic picture of how everything fit together.

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Why Is Blueprinting Valuable?

Community

Wholistic View

Communication

Value of Blueprinting? Many reasons
Gets people together to talk instead of piecemeal communication
Talking can lead to silos of task ownership breakdown for cohesive community building
Uncovers pain points and highlights barriers to address collectively
Encourages the shift toward a more holistic view of workflows across departments
Brings frontline and backend workers together- part of a larger puzzle

Full Thoughts

Overall, blueprinting is valuable for many reasons. The process gets people together to talk through their shared work together in a way that is really challenging to do piecemeal through email, chat, or just completing our own tasks individually. Once everyone really starts talking through their portion of the work, and especially as they each begin to see where their work has some cross-over or overlap, there can be this great side-effect where the silos of task-ownership-start to break down in favor of the community beginning to build together in more cohesive ways. The blueprinting process can uncover pain points and highlight barriers the group may be facing individually and collectively to really effectively get the work done. Hopefully, after seeing the whole process blueprinted out, there can be a shift for some towards seeing the processes more holistically instead of just focusing on their specific parts. That seemed to be the feedback that Beth received from some other BluePrinting sessions she’s told me about, talking to all the participants in those sessions. This is especially important to help build more cohesion and appreciation among frontline and back line workers whose work can seem worlds apart, but are really all just critical pieces in a bigger puzzle.

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Now It’s Your Turn

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Scenario

A user at your institution cannot access an electronic resource assigned for a course.

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Starting the Blue Printing Discussion

Who is the user?

A student complains they cannot access the item
The instructor who says none of their students can access the item �

Ways users reach out

Form?
Phone call?
Walk to desk?
Other?

What's Next? Let's talk through the rest of the steps

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MIRO BOARD TIME�https://miro.com/

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Let’s Talk About How It Went

Thoughts on this process/tool?
What was confusing? Particularly useful?
How can you see applying this method in your library?

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Thank You for Participating!

Ian Scofield

Ian.Scofield@oregonstate.edu

Beth Filar Willams

Beth.Filar-Williams@oregonstate.edu