Independent case · Practice professionally
Capstone: improve a whole experience
Apply the method in a new context. Review your own artifact against the criteria and decide what evidence would change it.
01 / New context
The situation
Fictional scenario
A fictional community health center offers class registration through web, phone staff, and an automated chat assistant. Classes have limited seats and eligibility rules.
Evidence and constraints
- Fictional observation: in six moderated sessions, two participants interpreted 'I found a place for you' as confirmed enrollment. Neither had a booking record. This is a failure mode in the observed sample, not a population rate.
- Fictional observation: one participant learned from phone staff that they were ineligible for the suggested class. The assistant had displayed the class before checking eligibility.
- Fictional system detail: the booking service can confirm a seat synchronously when online. During an outage it returns no confirmation; it does not reserve a place for later.
- Fictional operations detail: phone staff use a separate ledger that updates from the booking service about every fifteen minutes. Staff can resolve eligibility questions during staffed hours, but cannot guarantee a seat from the ledger alone.
- Fictional access constraint: some members use phone service because the web form is difficult with a screen reader. The team has not yet tested the assistant with screen-reader users or in languages other than English.
- Fictional policy uncertainty: the center has not supplied a complete list of exception rules or named an owner for assistant advice about eligibility. Do not invent those rules; state what must be verified before release.
- Fictional delivery constraint: the next release can change assistant copy and booking handoff. A shared real-time staff ledger would require a later release.
Recommend a staged change to the registration service. Produce a task and service map, observation-versus-hypothesis list, two design alternatives including failure states, a test plan with tasks and observations, a decision memo, and a revision rule. State what the small sample cannot establish. You may recommend pausing part of the assistant if the evidence warrants it.
Produce: A compact case dossier: journey map, finding cards, state model, test plan, decision memo, and revision trigger.
02 / Make and review
Your artifact
Your writing is stored only in this browser if you save it. Copy it to keep a separate version.
03 / Self-review
Check your judgment
Specific standard: The dossier distinguishes facts from hypotheses; aligns all channels to the actual enrollment state; handles eligibility, access, authority, and recovery; compares alternatives; and uses test tasks that can overturn the recommendation.
- Observation and inference are separated; the six sessions are not used as a population estimate.
- The service map identifies which system can confirm a seat, how the fifteen-minute staff ledger affects claims, and who owns each handoff.
- Alternatives address eligibility, screen-reader access, pending and failure states, and a human recovery route without inventing policy.
- Test tasks and observations could reveal whether people distinguish a suggestion from enrollment and whether the proposed safeguard adds unacceptable friction.
- The memo names release dependencies, decision owners, uncertainty, and a concrete condition for revising or stopping the assistant flow.
Next step
Your review is a prompt for revision, not an automatic grade. Compare your artifact with the specific standard above, inspect the worked example and guided feedback, then test your assumptions in the actual setting.
Use the evidence you named in your revision note to decide whether to keep, change, or discard your approach.