01 / Individual · Service design

Sauchiehall Alliance

A peer network that turns local recommendations into shared discovery and repeat visits for independent businesses.

Independent businesses on Sauchiehall Street already share knowledge and recommend nearby places through everyday conversations. I explored how those trusted local relationships could become a visible, low-effort service that helps customers discover more of the street while each business keeps control of its own offer.

Role: Service Designer · individual graduation project
Context: Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
Year: 2026
Focus: Research, service strategy, prototyping, blueprinting

Current outcome

The final proposal combines merchant stories, peer recommendations and a Discovery Postcard. Customers visit three different Alliance businesses per card, then choose an eligible anchor business for a return reward after completing three cards. Testing clarified the customer journey, daily staff task and business rules. A live pilot is the next step for measuring adoption, workload and economic fairness.

Challenge

Balancing shared visibility with business autonomy

What happened

Research exposed a shared need for discovery across businesses with very different margins, visit patterns and staff capacity. The first concept also asked customers to understand a nine-purchase path before seeing a reward, while staff responsibilities remained hard to see.

How I responded

I broke the service into one active postcard, separated owner setup from the checkout task, let each business set its own qualifying purchase, reward and monthly cap, and divided recommendations between merchant choice and Alliance rotation.

What changed

The revised model made the next action clearer and kept workload and financial responsibility visible. It also narrowed the remaining risks to questions a 90-day live pilot can measure: completion, staff time, reward cost and the distribution of visits.

01 / Context and situated research

A city-wide concern became a walkable study area.

The project began with the decline of independent businesses in Glasgow. Early desk research showed that this was too broad to design for responsibly, so I narrowed the study to Sauchiehall Street between Elmbank Street and Rose Street.

I combined street observation and mapping with conversations involving Business Glasgow and Lamino Pizza, then used later input from Glasgow Film Theatre and Good Press to test the relevance of the emerging direction. This situated approach connected policy-level support with the pressures of daily trading.

Mapped study area on Sauchiehall Street — The study boundary connected institutional, cultural and independent-business contexts along one walkable section of the street.

Situated research evidence and key findings — Street observation, service research and business conversations were synthesised into five connected findings.

Continue toOpportunity

02 / Framing the opportunity

Word of mouth became the material for a shared service.

Discovery already moved through shopfronts, digital platforms and personal recommendations. Conversations also showed that independent businesses value local connection, yet have limited time for new administrative work and need a clear reason to participate.

I focused the brief on local visibility, customer discovery and peer connection. This scope stayed close to the evidence and avoided claiming that one service could resolve wider pressures such as rent, energy prices or city-centre footfall.

Daily viability

Staffing, energy and input costs shape what a business can realistically sustain.

Discovery

Visibility spans the street, online routes and the way each business explains its distinctiveness.

Local relationships

Trusted recommendations already carry knowledge between customers and neighbouring businesses.

Continue toService proposition

03 / Service proposition

Recommendations become a visible discovery cycle.

Sauchiehall Alliance gives participating businesses a shared identity, a way to publish peer recommendations and one common record of customer discovery. Customers can enter through any member business and follow recommendations in either physical or digital form.

Each Discovery Postcard records visits to three different businesses. Three completed cards reveal the businesses that recur across the customer's route. The customer selects one of those anchors and returns for a reward chosen and funded by that business.

Illustrated Sauchiehall Alliance service proposition — A shared identity and recommendation mechanism connect businesses while allowing each offer to remain independent.

Six-step Discovery Postcard reward cycle — The cycle makes participation rules, progress and reward responsibility explicit.

Continue toTouchpoints and testing

04 / Touchpoints and testing

A booklet and postcard made the service testable.

I developed a fold-out discovery booklet to hold a merchant story and two recommendations, alongside a stamp card that could be checked at the till. These touchpoints made the proposal concrete enough to discuss with businesses and test from a customer's point of view.

Testing revealed that the full journey felt distant when all nine visits appeared at once. Staff activity and reward responsibility also needed to be clearer. The next version shows one active postcard, separates owner setup from the daily checkout task and lets every business define its own thresholds and monthly cap.

Printed Sauchiehall Alliance booklet and postcard prototype — The physical prototype places the service in a familiar point-of-sale setting.

Three spreads from the discovery booklet — Each booklet explains the place, carries a merchant story and passes on local recommendations.

Testing evidence and design responses — Observed friction was translated into specific changes to the journey, workload and reward rules.

Continue toJourney and operations

05 / Journey and operations

The final design keeps the next action and responsibility visible.

The final customer journey moves through notice, discover, choose, visit, verify, progress and return. Physical and digital touchpoints can update the same service record, while one active card keeps the next milestone visible.

The blueprint separates one-time owner decisions, a short frontline task and periodic Alliance review. This makes ownership, recovery routes and service records visible across the customer, staff and coordination layers.

Final Sauchiehall Alliance customer journey — The post-test journey connects customer actions, pain points and design opportunities.

Sauchiehall Alliance service blueprint — The blueprint shows how customer actions align with staff work and Alliance responsibilities.

Continue toPilot and reflection

06 / Live pilot and reflection

The next step is a 90-day live pilot.

This is a research-supported service proposal, and its impact has not yet been proven in operation. A live pilot would involve a small cross-sector group between Elmbank Street and Rose Street, using both physical and digital participation across one complete 90-day customer cycle.

The pilot should measure customer completion and return visits, staff time and reward cost, and how visits are distributed across the network. It must also establish who owns the service, coordinates changes and remains accountable when a business pauses or a record fails.

The project strengthened my ability to narrow a systemic issue into a testable service, connect qualitative evidence to operational decisions and make uncertainty visible. The most important outcome is a clearer basis for deciding whether the network is useful, sustainable and fair enough to continue.

Proposed structure and measures for a live pilot — The pilot plan turns the remaining assumptions into measurable questions for customers, businesses and the network.

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