Surf
Ocean
Freedom
Experience
Improving
the
Coworking Experience
Tropical Nomad is a coworking space in Bali built around one core promise: smooth, focused work. We mapped the end-to-end journey of digital nomads, validated friction points, and turned field insights into a Service Blueprint.
Year:
2026
Location:
Denpasar, Indonesia
Design framework:
Design Thinking, Service Blueprinting
Tools:
Service Design Intern / UX Researcher
Research
Define
Ideate
Outcome
The problem:
Coworking experience depends on small moments. Fast onboarding, stable Wi-Fi across zones, clear rules for calls vs. quiet work, and an easy way to ask for help. In practice, members hit micro-frictions that break flow: Wi-Fi dead spots, noise, unclear zoning, limited call rooms. Passive feedback (a QR code on a wall) doesn't work unless people see real impact.
Goal:
Create a practical Service Blueprint based on real field data and prepare the next phase: a staff co-creation workshop to ideate solutions, define success metrics (ROI), and set up an ongoing discovery loop.
My role:
Service Design Intern and UX Researcher responsible for end-to-end research, synthesis, and service blueprinting. From field observation through stakeholder interviews to the final blueprint and workshop prep.
Methods:
Service Safari
Stakeholder mapping
Staff interviews
Member interviews
Survey (Typeform + QR test)
Review mining
Insights synthesis
Service Blueprint (Miro)
Workshop prep
Success metrics (ROI)
Discovery
I started in the field, not in slides. I observed how members arrive, set up, choose zones, and recover when something breaks. I then validated patterns through staff conversations, member interviews, a survey experiment, and review mining. The goal was to capture real service moments that affect deep work, comfort, and feedback behaviour.
/01
Service Safari
Before interviewing anyone, I mapped the service as it happens in real life: arrival, first-minute onboarding, Wi-Fi setup, zone selection, noise and calls, and how people ask for help. This created a grounded baseline and prevented me from designing solutions based on assumptions.
/02
Stakeholder mapping
Coworking is a service system, not a reception desk. Mapping stakeholders revealed who actually shapes the experience: Community Desk, Operations, Marketing, Security, Public Area staff, Maintenance, and F&B.
All service actors mapped (frontstage, backstage, user)
Decision makers vs active contributors vs support roles separated
Third parties captured (Google, comms channels, ISP, contractors)
/03
Stakeholder interviews
After mapping roles and influence, I ran short stakeholder interviews with Tropical Nomad staff to understand how the service works behind the scenes. The focus was on ownership: who handles onboarding, who resolves Wi-Fi and noise issues, how events are communicated, and where operational constraints appear in daily reality.
Role clarity I documented what each role actually does in the customer journey. Community Desk vs Public Area vs Security vs Maintenance vs Ops.
Ownership mapping For each recurring situation (setup, Wi-Fi, noise, calls, comfort), I captured who is responsible and who gets involved when it escalates.
Service reality check I captured operational constraints and informal routines that aren't visible to members, but directly shape the experience.
/04
Survey and Member
Interviews
I started with a simple idea: collect feedback through a QR survey placed on the internal wall. Typeform showed that people opened it, but almost nobody finished it. That moment was important. It reminded me that coworkings are deep-work environments, and "passive feedback" competes with calls, deadlines, and focus.
So I pivoted. Instead of waiting for responses, I approached members directly, ran short in-depth conversations, and in many cases filled the survey together with them. That shift immediately improved participation and gave me richer context behind the answers. Not just what people chose, but why.
"Listening properly, like even if they got out Google Translate. I've had to do that multiple times here. Sri and Pavel are great and super helpful, but the rest of the staff can be confused or dismissive."
Anonymous member
Define
After collecting evidence in the field, I distilled the work into a clear problem picture. This phase focused on naming what truly breaks the coworking experience for deep-work nomads, and translating scattered observations into a shared service model that the team can act on.
/01
Service Blueprint
To turn fragmented insights into a shared, actionable view, I created a Service Blueprint of the Tropical Nomad experience. From "looking for a coworking" to onboarding and daily deep work. The blueprint connects customer actions with frontstage staff actions, backstage operations, and third-party dependencies (Wi-Fi provider, comms channels, Google Reviews). It became the single source of truth for where breakdowns happen and who is involved at each moment.
End-to-end service view What happens from first Google search, through onboarding and daily deep work, all the way to exit.
Frontstage and backstage clarity What members see vs. what needs to happen internally to make it work.
Failure points identified Wi-Fi, call room capacity, noise and maintenance, and communication channels.
Ideate
Research told us where the service was breaking. The next step was to turn those findings into ideas the team could actually run with. I facilitated a co-creation workshop with Tropical Nomad staff, Community Desk, Operations, and management in the same room, using the Service Blueprint as a shared reference. The goal wasn't to pitch solutions. It was to let the people who run the service every day shape what happens next.
/01
HMW Workshop
Using the "How Might We" method, I translated the biggest friction points from the Service Blueprint into open questions the team could solve together. Instead of arriving with a finished plan, I brought the problems and let the staff co-own the answer.
Shared language HMW questions reframed pain points (Wi-Fi dead spots, noisy zones, slow onboarding) into opportunities the whole team could work on, not complaints pointed at one department.
Cross-team alignment For the first time, Community Desk, Operations, and F&B were solving the same problems in the same room. Ownership stopped being a grey area.
Honest tension The workshop surfaced internal disagreements that had been silent for months (who handles member complaints, how fast is "fast" onboarding). That friction was the most valuable output of the day.
/02
Ideation and Dot Voting
After HMW, the team generated solutions in short rounds. Every participant contributed ideas on sticky notes, regardless of seniority. We then used democratic dot voting to prioritise what to test first not by who shouted loudest, but by what the team collectively believed would move the needle.
/03
Handover:
Recommendations
At the end of the internship, I delivered a prioritised list of recommendations built directly from the workshop outputs and the Service Blueprint. The document wasn't a design deck. It was an action list, mapped to owners and sequenced by impact vs effort, so the team could start on Monday.
The recommendations covered:
Onboarding flow (first-minute experience for new members)
Wi-Fi and zoning clarity across the space
Call room capacity and booking logic
Internal staff communication and escalation paths
Moving feedback from passive (QR code) to active (conversations + regular check-ins)
Deliver
At the end of the internship, I handed over three concrete outputs to the Tropical Nomad team: a final presentation, a Service Blueprint, and a prioritised list of recommendations ready to act on.
/01
Final presentation
A structured walkthrough of the full project. Context, research findings, the Service Blueprint, key friction points, and the solutions the team co-created in the workshop. Built for both staff and management, so everyone left with the same picture and the same priorities.
/02
Service Blueprint
The end-to-end service view, from first Google search to daily deep work. Frontstage, backstage, and third-party dependencies mapped in one place. Adopted as the internal reference for how the service works and where it breaks.
/03
Recommendations
document
An action-oriented list, not a design deck. Each recommendation mapped to an owner, sequenced by impact vs effort. Covered onboarding flow, Wi-Fi and zoning clarity, call room capacity, internal staff communication, and moving feedback from passive QR to active conversations. The team left with something they could start on Monday.
Outcome
Three things came out of this project. A validated Service Blueprint, a set of prioritised recommendations the team is already acting on, and an ongoing relationship that keeps the work alive beyond the internship.
/01
Impact
The Service Blueprint became the internal reference for how the service actually works. Stakeholder ownership, once a grey area, is now clarified across Community Desk, Operations, Maintenance, and F&B. Feedback collection shifted from a passive QR code nobody finished to active member conversations that produced richer, more actionable insight from day one. The HMW workshop was the first time Community Desk, Operations, and management solved the same problems in the same room.
/02
What I learned
Service design in a live environment means respecting the context you're researching. In a coworking full of deep-work nomads, every interruption has a cost. The method has to match the environment, otherwise you're not researching, you're just annoying people. I also learned that the most valuable output of a workshop isn't the ideas on the board. It's the disagreements that finally get said out loud.
/03
Next steps
The project continues. I stay in touch with the Tropical Nomad team to track how the recommendations are landing in practice, what's working, and where new friction appears as changes roll out.
Follow-up review. Revisit the Service Blueprint with the team to see which friction points have shifted, which new ones emerged, and what the implemented changes did to daily experience.
Success metrics. Define ROI indicators against the recommendations (onboarding time, Wi-Fi incidents, call room availability, feedback volume and quality) so impact can be measured, not just assumed.
Ongoing discovery loop. Establish a lightweight recurring cadence so feedback keeps flowing and the service keeps improving long after the internship ends.
