Barry Khan – Service Designer Birmingham

Week of AI, Automation & Blueprints

Date // Category weeknotes

Weeknotes from 15 May 2026

Things I did

At work

On the train heading into the office for a large 70 person event. Walking through some service mapping and high level opportunities. Working on the DEFRA engagement is making me consider re-use more than ever.

AI Exploration

Been using Claude a fair bit more, and the level of AI being used around me has ramped up. It's been great for mapping assumptions, but outputs still look too polished and take a keen eye to separate fact from fiction. I've had some good sessions validating outputs and facilitating ideation, and it's been an eye opener seeing how far I can push it.

Interactive Blueprints

Interactive blueprints have gained traction, and being able to maintain the updates and new insights has been really valuable. It's freed up my time to cover more ground, and I'm hoping it eventually frees me up to do more Service Design work beyond artefact creation.

At play

Back to work after a long weekend! Had a great one — bike rides, walks, taxiing the kids… all good though. Fell down the rabbit hole of paddle boards and kayaks, so hopefully something will land before the summer. Also viewed the KIA PV5, which looks awesome.

Personal Automations

Writing this on my new-to-me refurb Remarkable 2, which has nudged me down a bit of an automation rabbit hole.

I've been making a few small tools — starting with one that renames expense files using Google Drive scripts and OCR to scan a scanned receipt and give it a sensible file name (category+supplier+value+date).

On the back of that, I've been working on a script that pulls files from the Remarkable based on a #weeknotes hashtag, trawls through my horrendous handwriting, and outputs a .md file using a similar template structure I use on this site. I've done the same for doodles, and even added a draft view triggered by a #feedback hashtag that outputs a .md with suggestions on how to improve the weeknote.

Till next time!

A bit about me: I'm a UCD specialist focused on Service Design, with a passion for accessibility and creating services for all. I navigate the world with a dry sense of humor, finding the funny side in the most mundane tasks.