HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN | DISCOVERY

Service Safari and Shadowing

30 Min+

The Service Safari tool allows researchers to step into the shoes of users by experiencing a service or system themselves. First hand experience helps researchers develop a robust understanding of the joys and pain points felt by users. Shadowing is similar but involves researchers accompanying a user as they go through a product or service journey, and jointly reflecting on their experience.

USE CASES

Understand a user's experience better.
Identify the various steps involved in a given experience or service.
Learn how users may be maximising positive experiences, and minimising negatives within a given system.

LIMITATIONS

A single Service Safari or Shadowing session may throw up limited insight. Different locations and sets of people may offer different experiences. It is crucial that researchers take a realistic view of experiences, and do not project their own biases and preferences.

People Shadowing | DIY Toolkit

UNDERSTANDING THE TOOL

A user experience journey is broken down into specific steps — Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc. in order to map observations in an end-to-end manner.
The ‘Details’ column lists questions such as — What did you do? Or What did you like or dislike? which are prompts for researchers to note their observations and experiences through the journey.

STEP BY STEP

Choose a tool: Choose between the Shadowing or Service Safari approach, depending on the research context.
Find a respondent: Recruit a participant willing to be accompanied (for shadowing) and document their actions as they go through the journey. If you are doing it yourself, then decide how you will document it.
Map the user experience: List down the distinct steps, actions, objects, people that constitute the experience.
Ask questions: After the experience has been completed, you can revisit steps you would like to learn more about.

HOW TO FOR FACILITATORS

At the start: Explain the activity to participants and check if they intend to use shadowing or service safari or both.
During the exercise: If accompanying participants on the field, encourage them to look for unexpected details that might otherwise get missed.
At the close: Have participants share their observations and ask them to highlight what they found to be the most interesting or surprising.

FACILITATORS QUESTION BANK

Does the team plan to use one or both tools?
Which part of the journey are you looking to observe and learn more about?
Who will you be going through the experience? Have you identified a user?
Have you experienced a similar service or system before? What expectations are you carrying to the field?
What is the most important thing you want to learn from this exercise?
How will you make sure you are respectful and unobtrusive during research?
What did you learn about the different steps? Is there something you would like to understand better?
Which step of the journey is most challenging for users? Do you have any immediate thoughts on how it could be improved?

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