Journey maps and service blueprints reveal where user needs, policy, operations, and technology pull apart.
Service Design Lead · Design Researcher · Toronto
I design public services people can understand and use.
I turn policy, operational realities, and human needs into clearer journeys—giving teams a shared view of the system and a practical path forward.
Public
need
need
Policy
Channel
Frontline
Evidence
Operations
Technology
What I bring
Design that holds up in the real world.
I’m Adi Prakash, a service design lead and design researcher working in Ontario’s public sector. My work connects the experience residents have with the policies, processes, tools, and people that make that experience possible.
Research clarifies the problem, tests assumptions, and keeps decisions anchored in how people actually navigate a service.
Facilitation turns different perspectives into shared language, visible trade-offs, and decisions teams can act on.
Plain language, assisted channels, accessibility, and trust are considered from the start—not added at the end.
Selected work
From complexity to a service teams can see.
A selection of practice-led work across global health, inclusive services, verification, high-friction forms, and access to benefits. Expand each project for the problem, approach, and contribution.
Leading field research for Records for Life
Indonesia research lead
Led the Indonesia leg of a three-country programme exploring how child health records could work better for families, frontline workers, and public-health systems.
The project combined a global design challenge with field research in Bihar, Bandung, and Kisumu. I owned the Bandung research stream and brought the Indonesian context into the programme’s cross-country synthesis.
- Scope
- 314 submissions · 41 countries
- Methods
- Field research · co-design · synthesis
- Contribution
- Led the Indonesia research leg
Leading service research with micro-entrepreneurs in Colombo
Colombo research lead
Led the Colombo leg of a multi-country study of how urban micro-entrepreneurs navigate telecom, electricity, and government services.
As a Design Researcher at CKS, I directed the Colombo fieldwork and supported recruitment, innovation workshops, analysis, and report writing across the wider programme. The team translated cross-city evidence into 43 service concepts.
- Scope
- 4 cities · 3 service sectors
- Methods
- Ethnography · interviews · co-design
- Contribution
- Led the Colombo research leg
Making verification a service, not a hurdle
Future-state model
Reframed verification as a reusable service capability spanning customer and call-centre interactions—not a one-off step hidden inside each journey.
The work made the backstage visible: assurance decisions, channels, staff needs, handoffs, and failure points. A concise future-state model gave the team a common object for testing assumptions and planning the next level of detail.
- Framing
- Cross-channel service capability
- Methods
- Systems mapping · service blueprinting
- Contribution
- Future-state model · team alignment
Turning a difficult form into a guided conversation
Voice-first concept
Explored how a high-stakes objection process could feel less like form completion and more like a structured, supportive interview.
The prototype used seven guided sections, branching for different roles, deadline awareness, confirmation of critical details, editable review, and downloadable outputs. Typing remained available as a quiet fallback.
- Framing
- Reduce cognitive load without removing agency
- Methods
- Conversation design · rapid prototyping
- Status
- Concept prototype
Helping people prepare for a disability-benefit conversation
Access to benefits
Reframed a benefit-form helper around the real service challenge: helping a person explain their day-to-day experience clearly and arrive at a practitioner conversation prepared.
The concept pairs plain-language orientation with a practitioner-ready briefing package. Its ethical line is deliberate: describe accurately, never script answers. The work is being shaped through practitioner discovery and accessibility testing before release.
- Framing
- Tell your story once
- Methods
- Service research · content design
- Principle
- Helpful history, not approval coaching
How I work
Make the invisible visible. Then make it actionable.
Public services are shaped by more than interfaces. I work across the end-to-end service, bringing the people who use it and the people who deliver it into the same picture.
- 01Understand the lived journeyCombine qualitative research, service data, and frontline knowledge.
- 02Map the system behind itExpose policies, handoffs, dependencies, constraints, and uneven access.
- 03Build alignment around choicesFacilitate decisions using shared artefacts—not competing slide decks.
- 04Prototype the service, not only the screenTest language, channels, staff workflows, and operational feasibility together.
Let’s make public services easier to navigate.
I’m interested in permanent roles spanning service design, design research, and digital delivery—across the public and private sectors.