Everyday Requester
Classroom teacher · ~15–20 jobs/term
Pain
Got the spec wrong before the form existed; no visibility once submitted.
“I shouldn’t have to message reprographics just to check.”
Back to work
Service DesignSystems Thinking2026
Fixing the print request bottleneck for an 800‑student school
Redesigning a one‑person reprographics service that ran on email, Teams and memory.
1Person running it, for ~100 staff
10–50Open requests at once
100k+Pages in one exam print run
2Printers, one room
How I worked
No research budget — I was the practitioner and the researcher.
A solo, embedded role. No formal interviews, but continuous first‑hand exposure across every request, plus a real build → fail → adjust cycle.
Observation
Embedded / participant observation
Daily exposure to failure points as they happened.
Synthesis
Pain‑point clustering
Recurring breakdowns grouped into named themes.
Mapping
Current‑state process map
Traced submit → print → collect, manual vs. automatic.
Iteration
Build → fail → adjust
Spreadsheet failed → form shipped → queue concept next.
The problem
No single channel. No tracking. No visibility.
Email
Teams
In person
No queue,
no record
no record
Requests arrived however was convenient in the moment. A few times every term that meant a lost request, a missed deadline, or a double‑booked printer — worst of all when 100,000+ page exam jobs collided with the usual day‑to‑day printing.
Who I was designing for
Three requester patterns, not one generic “user”.
Composite proto‑personas built from real behaviour patterns across ~100 staff — not individual interview subjects.
Urgent Senior Requester
SLT · low volume, high urgency
Pain
Often bypassed the form for anything urgent; expected instant priority.
“I don’t have three days’ notice for a governors’ meeting.”
Big-Job Coordinator
Exams/booklets · rare, very high volume
Pain
Needed capacity confirmed weeks out, not discovered as a conflict mid‑week.
“I just need to know my slot is locked in.”
Shipped & live
What I built
A structured intake form that ended misprints.
A shared spreadsheet failed first — no structure, broken links, no real way to attach files. I replaced it with a Cognito Form on a fixed SharePoint link, with every print‑spec field mandatory.
Print Request Form — Cognito Forms
Name & email *J. Marsh
Colour / B&W *B&W
Single / double sided *Double
A4 / A3 *A4
Copies *32
Needed by *Fri 14 Nov
File / link *worksheet.pdf
Result: mandatory fields made incomplete requests impossible — misprints stopped.
The catch: the two status messages either side of printing — confirming an ETA, then saying it was ready in Room G015 — were still typed by hand on Teams. Up to ~100 a term across all requests.
Concept — not yet built
What I’d build next
The real gap wasn’t intake. It was visibility.
A queue layered on the form I already shipped — same intake, same Microsoft 365 setup, no new logins. It surfaces the whole workload at a glance and sends the status updates I was typing by hand.
Admin Queue — Reprographics Dashboard
New6
Y11 Mock — Science
Big JobDue Mon
SLT — Governor Pack
Urgent
Printing4
Yr7 Booklet
Printer A
Ready · G0153
Newsletter — Nov
Auto‑notified
Why: priority is visible, not verbal — a rush job’s impact on everyone else shows before I commit to it.
Capacity Planner
Mon
Tue
Wed — Exam
Thu — Exam
Fri
Daily requests
Protected big‑job capacity
Auto‑Notify, No Login
Ready — Room G015
Y11 Mock Paper · Printed Fri
Why: exam runs get protected capacity instead of competing job‑by‑job; and status updates replace the two hand‑typed Teams messages per request.
Anticipated — not measured
Fewer manual messages; trade‑offs made visible rather than silent; fewer
exam‑week surprises; and a measurable bypass signal, since off‑form requests
would finally show up as a gap I could track.
Key decisions
Why it looks like this, not something flashier.
Kept Cognito Forms
It already works and staff already know it. Redesigning it would’ve been for the portfolio, not the school.
No auto‑prioritisation
SLT vs. Year 11 exams isn’t a logic problem — trade‑offs are surfaced, a human still decides.
No login for status
Staff ignore tools that ask for another password. A lookup keeps friction near zero.
Honest close
One part real. One part still a hypothesis.
Part One is real and shipped. Part Two is a concept I didn’t get to build before the contract ended — I’d validate it with the staff who bypassed the form, and with SLT specifically, before building it for real rather than assuming the mockup is the answer.
Cognito Forms
SharePoint
Microsoft Teams
Power Automate (concept)
Service Design
This is the short version.
The full write‑up covers the methods in detail, all three personas, the complete dashboard concept, key decisions and honest limitations.