Case study 08 Cross-program, REI Systems
The CX Playbook
A shared operating manual for customer experience, still being revised nine months after it won an award.
- Client
- Cross-program, REI Systems
- Role
- Co-author, one of six
- Recognition
- 2024 ClearMark Award · Category Winner · Longer Brochures
Summary
A method people could pick up mid-project.
Every program at REI was solving the same customer experience problems on its own. One team would build a persona template from scratch while another team two floors away had already built a better one and never shared it. New designers spent their first months rediscovering things a five-year veteran already knew, because none of it had been written down anywhere a new hire would think to look.
The fix could not just be a slide deck of best practices. It needed to be something programs would actually pick up mid-project, which meant it had to teach a method, not just assert one.
The problem
Shared CX knowledge was everywhere and nowhere.
The practice had capable people and repeated work, but no common operating manual. A useful workshop artifact stayed with the team that made it. A new designer inherited the problem rather than the answer. Without a shared method, “customer experience” could mean a persona, a journey map, a service blueprint, or a polished interface depending on who was speaking.
The playbook had to make the relationship between those things visible and give a team a sequence it could use without needing the original author in the room.
What we did
Six co-authors, five plays, one shared way in.
The CX Playbook is a genuine team effort. The cover credits six co-authors: Sandra Gerges, Jeimy Rodriguez, Parminder Sandhu, Andrew Zeswitz, Anna Patsel-Powell, and Beverly Ingle. The writing, structure, and visual system run through all six names. This case study describes what the finished playbook contains and how it is put together; it does not overclaim which individual pages or diagrams Parminder personally drove.
The result is a 37-page document organized as five sequential Plays, each with its own section tab and a callout up front stating what the play is for.
Play 1, Identify and Understand Your Customer
It opens with a blunt premise: the word “customer” means something different from everyone in the room, so the first job is agreeing on a definition before anything gets designed. The play works through service design’s three Ps, props, people, and processes, borrowed explicitly from the Nielsen Norman Group methodology, and defines front stage versus backstage plus the lines of interaction and visibility between them.
It ends with a real service blueprint and a real customer journey map, both built around an internal example: a client’s outdated-reports dashboard, walked through four stages from before pulling a report to viewing the finished one, with actions, thoughts, touchpoints, and feelings mapped at each stage.
The framework Play 1 opens with
Five nested layers, and the three resources every layer draws on
A five-layer CX framework shown as nested bands from broadest to narrowest: Service Design, Customer Experience, System Design, UX Design, and UI Design. Beside it are the three Ps of service design: Props, People, and Processes.
The three Ps of service design
From the Nielsen Norman Group methodology
Props
Physical or digital artifacts, including products, used throughout the service.
People
Anyone who creates, uses, or is indirectly affected by the service.
Processes
Workflows, procedures, or rules needed to perform the service successfully.
Broadest at the top. Service design sets the context everything else has to fit inside; UI design is the narrowest, most visible layer.
Play 2
Build a strategy before building a solution.
Play 2 insists on measurement before anything gets built. It separates behavioral data, such as task success and session duration, from attitudinal data, such as CSAT and NPS. It cites Executive Order 12862 as the reason federal teams need to benchmark customer service against private-sector standards in the first place, not just as a nice-to-have.
Play 3
Design the user experience, then let testing change it.
Solution ideation techniques, brainstorming, user interviews, and low-fidelity hand sketches feed into a prototyping loop the playbook draws out explicitly: paper prototype to low-fidelity to high-fidelity, with a user-testing checkpoint and a refine-or-review decision at each of the last two stages before the loop repeats.
Play 3, the prototyping loop
Three fidelities, and user testing sits between the last two, not just at the end
A prototyping loop moves from paper prototype to low-fidelity prototype to high-fidelity prototype. User testing happens after both low-fidelity and high-fidelity, with refine or review decisions looping back into the work. Iteration can return to an earlier stage.
What each stage is for
Hand sketches or a tool like Balsamiq. Gets the flow out of discussion before anyone argues about color.
Structure and navigation only. The first stage that actually gets tested with users.
Fully detailed, close to the final product. Still tested and still allowed to change.
Nothing skips user testing on the way to done. Iterate loops back even from high-fidelity if review says so.
Play 4
Test before launch, with more than one kind of test.
The playbook names five distinct testing methods rather than treating “usability testing” as one thing: task-oriented testing, 508 and WCAG accessibility testing, device and browser testing, unmoderated remote testing, and card sorting for information architecture. Each gets its own short definition rather than a single paragraph waving at usability testing in general.
Play 4, five ways to test, not one
The playbook treats usability testing as five distinct methods, each with its own use
Five testing cards: task-oriented testing, accessibility testing against Section 508 and WCAG, device browser and operating-system testing, unmoderated remote testing, and card sorting for information architecture.
Task-oriented
Give participants a real task, log in, submit a form, and watch the click path unfold unscripted.
Accessibility
Heuristic review against Section 508 and WCAG: text hierarchy, color contrast, and timing.
Device / browser / OS
The same product, tested across screen sizes, browsers, and operating systems.
Unmoderated remote
Unmoderated remote testing for heat maps, mis-clicks, success rate, and bounce rate.
Card sorting
Participants group content their own way, revealing how they actually expect it organized.
Naming five methods instead of one “we did usability testing” line is itself a signal: the playbook is trying to teach a method, not just assert one.
Play 5
Continuously evaluate and improve.
Play 5 closes the loop with a learn, build, measure cycle and a section on change management. Its premise is simple: a product nobody adjusts to is a product that quietly stops getting used regardless of how well it was designed.
The playbook backs its claims with five real citations: Gartner and IDC data on CX spending, Pew Research on public trust in government, and the actual text of the IDEA Act and the proposed TIPS Act. It treats the case for CX as something to support, not something to wave through because it sounds self-evident.
It also ships as a starting point rather than a finished lecture. The appendix links to six companion templates: a service blueprint, two persona formats, a journey map, a UX quick-start guide, and a methodologies reference. A team reading the playbook can walk straight into its own project with the same tools already in hand.
What came of it
The award was not the finish line.
Two copies of the playbook survive. Version 1.0 is dated April 2023 and carries no award badge on its cover. Version 1.4 is dated February 2025, and the ClearMark badge is printed on the front.
The award was presented on May 9, 2024, which puts it between the two. Version 1.0 is the document the judges read. Version 1.4 is what the team kept building for another nine months after it had already won something.
What the version history makes visible
Two surviving versions, and the award between them
A coded revision timeline shows version 1.0 dated April 2023 with no award badge, the ClearMark Award on May 9 2024, and version 1.4 dated February 2025 with the award badge on its cover. A lower marker identifies a 22-month gap where versions 1.1 through 1.3 were not kept.
37 pages, no award badge on the cover
Category Winner, Longer Brochures
Award badge printed on the cover
Version 1.0 predates the award by thirteen months, which makes it the copy the judges read. Version 1.4 is dated nine months after the win, with the badge already on its cover. The team put the badge on and kept editing.
The Center for Plain Language recognized the playbook as a 2024 ClearMark Award category winner in Longer Brochures, one of the categories the center uses to judge clarity and simplicity in long-form English, Spanish, and French content across North American organizations. Judges called out three things specifically: that the designers’ care for CX and UX showed in the finished work, that the structure was clear, cohesive, and easy to scan, and that color, emphasis, and imagery were used well rather than decoratively.
2024 ClearMark Award
Category Winner, Longer Brochures, Center for Plain Language
The 2024 ClearMark Award trophy, presented May 9 2024 by the Center for Plain Language, sits beside three judge quotes praising the team’s care for CX and UX, clear cohesive structure, and effective use of color, emphasis, and imagery. Six co-authors are named.
The physical award, Center for Plain Language
What the judges said
It is clear the designers care about CX/UX and put that knowledge to work.
Clear, cohesive, and consistent structure, easy to scan.
Uses color, emphasis, and imagery to excellent effect.
The playbook carries a six-person byline; the sequential Plays are mine, and the finished document is shared credit.