Service Safari Toolkit

Share :
service safari toolkit graphic with a photo of the notebook and binoculars

Your step-by-step guide to immersive service exploration—designed to build empathy, uncover insights, and enhance service experiences.

Our Service Safari Toolkit equips you with everything you need to evaluate services firsthand. Discover frameworks, note-taking templates, and actionable insights to build better experiences.

What is a Service Safari?

A Service Safari involves visiting a service location and engaging with it from the customer’s perspective. By doing so, designers can observe and analyze the service’s touchpoints, interactions, and overall effectiveness. This method emphasizes firsthand experience, making it a powerful tool for identifying strengths and weaknesses in a service.

service safari is an efficient and cost-effective method for uncovering actionable insights in everyday experiences

Why and When to Use the Service Safari Toolkit?

Our Service Safari Toolkit equips you with the framework for effective service evaluations. It guides you through observing and documenting various aspects of the service experience, ensuring a comprehensive analysis.

At Harmonic, we like to use service safaris at the beginning of research or ideation to center participants on improving a service experience! We’ve done this with our clients and internally with our teams.

Benefits of Conducting a Service Safari:

  • Empathy Building: Experience the service as customers do, fostering a deeper understanding of their needs and challenges.
  • Identifying Pain Points: Uncover areas where the service may be lacking, providing opportunities for targeted improvements.
  • Enhancing Service Quality: Use insights gained to refine and enhance the overall service experience.
  • Kickstart Insight Gathering: An accessible way to kick-start your research and design efforts at minimal cost and time!

Project highlight: our team took a multi-city service safari through NYC, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta to uncover transit’s pain points, highlights, and opportunities for improvement.

Stages of the Service Safari

Read more about our step-by-step process in the PDF asset below!

Planning Your Safari

  • Set clear goals: Define what you aim to learn and the scope of your safari.
  • Choose your approach:
    • Individual: Offers varied, personal insights.
    • Group: Enables collaboration and note-sharing.
  • Prepare questions to guide your observations.
  • Anticipate variables: Time of day, peak hours, weather, and accessibility challenges.
AD 4nXcuWqF4ct7bhwtq3iRgA6 IOH3 OoPM4IHM9YZEkiQb6I nIbBjiFBL0Eyp7O5O3kpv6isSjuwaE x PhvkDDyr0ZHuYVfyJfsZbmREw2plbbq0mJ6Ig7WRn 6bM4y0CaKhv08
Prepping our toolkit and material for the zoo service safari.

Observing and Documenting

  • Document effectively:
    • Use accessible tools like notebooks or smartphones for quick note-taking.
    • Design tools for your environment (e.g., small notebooks for public transit).
  • Maintain ethical standards:
    • Obtain consent for photos or videos.
    • Engage in respectful, informal conversations.

Using Observational Frameworks

  • Leverage proven tools to structure your observations:
    • TACIT (created by Harmonic Design): Thoughts, Actions, Context, Interactions, Touchpoints. Learn more about TACIT below.
  • Other Frameworks
    • AEIOU: Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, Users.
      Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users
      Developed by Rick E. Robinson of SapientNitro
    • POEMS: People, Objects, Environments, Messages, Services.
  • Select the framework(s) that best align with your research goals.
Zoo Employees
Informal interviews can depend on your understanding and strengthen your insights

Turning Learnings Into Action

  • Debrief Quickly: Share findings through facilitated discussions or surveys.
  • Synthesize Insights: Identify patterns and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
  • Apply Findings:
    • Create outputs like journey maps, service blueprints, or empathy maps.
    • Use findings to inform service improvements or the next steps in your project

Tips for Success

Do:🚫 Don’t:
Experiment with accessibility scenarios (e.g., using strollers or carrying groceries).Overlook key user needs or biases in your observations.
Set a clear goal or task for your safari.Take photos or videos without permission.
Engage in informal conversations (with permission)Overlook digital touchpoints
AD 4nXf7pbsHiSqvP3tXmjHOh6YhLPlFEVU2YRmVXuziZN3yeXuWaZ3wyrq7FZ15YNrArN2d6PD4m9qBeUD3Gpo3AwKjra0LPJ0x8P3Xhs7ICnPqKCo7Tp ymdO13XZKjpAMruEj8 AtCg
Pinning up our findings for the Central Library service safari

Key terms

TACIT Framework (Touchpoint, Actor, Content, Interaction, Timing). 

  • T: Touchpoint
    A point of interaction between a customer or service. Touchpoints can be physical (e.g., a library card), digital (e.g., a holds notification), or intangible (e.g., a verbal greeting).
  • A: Actor
    A person or organization participating in a service. All actors—whether they are customers, staff members, partners, or so on—can produce and receive value as they interact with one another.
  • C: Content
    The information, visuals, and tools that guide, inform, and inspire—crafted to connect with people’s needs and emotions in the context.
  • I: Interaction
    The dialogue between a person and a product, system, or service. Observe how people connect, navigate, and respond.
  • T: Timing 
    The orchestration of when and how experiences unfold. Objectively in terms of minutes and hours and subjectively in terms of patience and convenience. For each stage of the experience, approximately how long do tasks take?

Service
A service is an act of doing something for another. Typically, multiple actors participate in a service, co-creating value as they interact over time. For example, Airbnb is a service in which guests, hosts, and other third parties work with Airbnb employees and systems to gain some benefit—a place to stay, money for a spare room, building equity, etc. 

Service Ecosystem
The system of relationships among people, places, institutions, and things that create constraints and opportunities for a service organization or service.

Who is this for

  • Consultants and coaches
  • Designers and researchers
  • Government and community organizers
  • Not-for-profits
  • Start-ups and innovation teams
  • Students

What to do with these findings?

  • The team can adjust their research activities based on the findings
  • Map your experience by creating a systems map! You can also hypothesize an experience using a service blueprint or journey map.

Toolkit Assets

How to Use the Toolkit:

  1. Preparation: Familiarize yourself with a service safari and how to conduct one with the step-by-step guide.
  2. On-Site Observation: Use the framework to guide your observations when visiting the service location and engaging with it as a customer.
  3. Documentation: Use the note-taking templates as a guide or reference to create your own for your service safari.

Observational Framework

Our TACIT framework (Touchpoint, Actor, Content, Interaction, Timing) helps structure your observations, ensuring all critical elements of the service are evaluated. See TACIT in action in the note-taking guide PDF below.

Deck

How to conduct a service safari with a detailed step-by-step presentation.

Service Safari: A Path to Better Service Design (PDF)

Note-Taking Example

Structured notebooks assist in recording observations systematically, making it easier to analyze and share findings. We recommend creating them specifically scoped and designed for your analysis.

For reference, here is our public transportation note-taking guide (PDF)

Further reading and resources

🐘 Blog: Service Safari (Elephants Included)

🚎 Blog: Exploring Transit Systems: Lessons from a Multi-City Service Safari

📚 Video: Service Safari at Atlanta’s Central Library

External resource: Service Safaris | Interaction Design Foundation

External resource: How To Do a Service Safari | UX Pin

Transform Your Service Experiences With Insight

Embark on a service safari to gain firsthand insights and drive meaningful improvements in your service design.

service safari public transporation notes 1
cc licensing 1

Sharing the Harmonic Way

At Harmonic Design, we believe in the power of co-creation and the beauty of ideas flowing freely. That’s why this content is offered under a Creative Commons license that encourages remixing, adapting, and building upon our work—so long as it’s for non-commercial purposes. 

When using this work, please acknowledge Harmonic Design as your inspiration. Collaboration thrives on credit where it’s due. When in doubt, reach out—we’d love to connect! 

Learn more about what this license allows: Service Safari Toolkit Assets © 2025 by Harmonic Design is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Service Safari Toolkit Assets © 2025 by Harmonic Design is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

First edition
Published January 2025

Harmonic Design
50 Hurt Plaza SE #930
Atlanta, GA 30303

Share: