Visualizing the Invisible: Service Blueprinting for Tutors
When tutors first join Course Hero, their earliest experiences set the tone for their long-term engagement. However, onboarding was fragmented across multiple teams, leading to unnecessary friction for both tutors and staff.
This project set out to create Course Hero’s first Tutor Onboarding Service Blueprint — a holistic map of the tutor journey and supporting operations — to uncover pain points, align stakeholders, and inform the product roadmap.
Teammates
UX Researcher
Business Managers
Technology Managers
Engineers
My Role
I led this initiative as the UX Researcher, collaborating with a Product Manager and Service Owners. My responsibilities included:
Designing and leading stakeholder interviews
Facilitating cross-functional workshops
Synthesizing findings into the Tutor Onboarding Service Blueprint
Guiding the team in adopting a service design lens to problem-solving
PROCESS
My Approach
Service Blueprinting Approach by Nielsen Norman Group
As the UX Researcher, I led the research approach and facilitated cross-functional workshops. I worked closely with the Product Manager and Service Owners to scope the project, conduct stakeholder interviews, and co-create the first version of the Tutor Onboarding Service Blueprint.
Discovery and Alignment
Who are we designing the website for?
We began by conducting 1:1 stakeholder interviews with front-stage (tutor-facing) and backstage (operational) staff.
These sessions revealed overlapping responsibilities, dependencies, and pain points hidden within the onboarding process.
I led the team to complete the a Stakeholder Map which helps us identify key front and back stage staff touchpoints important to the End User.
Mapping the Service Space
Using insights from interviews, we built out the service landscape — identifying all actors, systems, and workflows that shape the tutor journey from discovery → application → onboarding.
Collaborative Workshops
I facilitated workshops in Miro where staff from different departments worked together to build the service blueprint.
Each team added missing touchpoints, highlighted pain points, and marked opportunities using shared visual symbols.
This participatory approach gave every team a voice and ensured buy-in for the final blueprint.
Creating the Service Blueprint
For the first time, invisible backstage processes were made visible, helping the organization see where tutors experienced friction and where staff processes broke down.
The output was a comprehensive blueprint that visualized tutor onboarding as both a tutor journey and an ecosystem of support operations.
KEY INSIGHTS
Made the invisible visible: Visualized hidden processes, bottlenecks, and redundancies that slowed tutor onboarding.
Shifted mindsets: Encouraged teams to think beyond their own silos and embrace an ecosystem-wide perspective.
Exposed weaknesses: Revealed misaligned responsibilities and inefficiencies in application review and tutor support.
Built collaboration: Created a shared language and framework for cross-functional problem solving.
OUTCOME OF SERVICE DESIGN WORK & IMPACT
The Tutor Onboarding Service Blueprint v1 became a foundational tool for Course Hero’s product and operations planning. It:
Informed roadmap decisions by highlighting the highest-impact opportunities for improvement
Fostered alignment across teams who had previously worked in isolation
Served as a baseline for measuring improvements year over year
Roadmap purpose: I leveraged the service blueprint to help the wider team understand how what they’re working on now relates to future work and priorities.
NEXT STEPS
High Value Human-Centered Solutions
We recommended an annual refresh of the blueprint to track progress, compare pain points year-over-year, and ensure that both tutor and staff needs are represented in roadmap planning. This ongoing practice keeps the organization focused on continuous improvement in service design.