The document provides guidance on running a Business Origami workshop to better understand users and map out systems or processes. Business Origami is a collaborative design thinking activity that uses paper cutouts to represent people, places, things, and their interactions. It helps visualize relationships and uncover pain points and opportunities for improvement. The document outlines workshop preparations, activities, and goals which include creating models of the ecosystem, identifying interactions and challenges, and gathering insights to inform further research. It also includes an example practice workshop focused on mapping employees' lunch habits.

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Business Origami
Method
by Anna Harasimiuk and Anita Cator
Sabre User Experience Design
11 April 2018
A practical guide to running a Business
Origami workshop

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About the presenters…
Anna Harasimiuk
User Experience Research Principal, Sabre Hospitality Solutions
• Anna has over 10 years of hands-on experience in conducting and
managing usability tests and user research projects
• Over 22 years of experience in the user experience field and nearly 17
years of experience in travel industry
• Anna’s career evolved from web design, web development, web communication, and content
management to user research and usability
• Most recently Anna supports Sabre’s hospitality solutions, which enable hoteliers to personalize
the guest experience, and manage hotel operations, distribution and retail.
• Anna is devoted to the grassroots work of evangelizing user research, usability, and user-centered
thinking.

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Anita Cator
Lead User Experience Designer, Sabre Hospitality Solutions
• Over 25 years of application design experience.
• A 15 year veteran with Sabre, most recently focused on hospitality
solutions; previously on solutions for corporate business travel and
agencies.
• She is a UX Designer, Visual Designer, an Interaction Designer, and she is a
usability/accessibility guru.
• She loves the creative aspects involved in designing interfaces for desktop and mobile
applications.
• Anita has delivered exceptional results, is recognized as a decisive and innovative leader, and
works extremely well with diverse teams and on complex projects.
About the presenters…

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“Business Origami enables teams to paper-prototype
the interactions and value exchange among people,
artifacts, and environments in a multichannel system.”
“Business Origami” method
 Collaborative design thinking activity used to better
understand the end users and their environment
 Can be used to map-out a process or users’ eco system (to
create a miniature model of a system)
 Method frequently used in service design
 Invented by the Hitachi Design Center (Japan)
 Uses paper cut-outs representing people, places, things
 Cut-outs are placed on a board or a big piece of paper
 Lines are drawn between cut-outs to show interactions
Universal Methods of Design, Bruce Hanington,
Bella Martin, February 1, 2012

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• Interactive, fun, engaging
• Very visual – helps to see a big picture, captures players,
dependencies, interactions with people and their surroundings
• Helps to see challenges and opportunities
• Sets the ground for other data-gathering methods, like interviews,
surveys, observations, etc.
• Easy to transition to other design thinking methods, like anchors &
accelerators, empathy maps, journey maps, etc.
Why “Business Origami”?

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• Cut out the paper elements that you will use (people,
buildings, objects, etc.).
• Consider limiting the number of the cut-out types to just a few to
focus participants on the big picture.
• Look for a whiteboard or a big piece of paper
• A poster board will make it easier to carry the map around.
• Create an example of the interactions: pick a first few
elements and outline the interactions between them
• Place an example on the board.
• Prepare and print a card with workshop instructions and a
list of questions
• Conduct a dry-run of the activity!!!
The workshop preparations

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Make sure you have enough time to explain the activity
to the participants
• Explain the goals, process, and the outcomes
• Show examples
• Define the roles (participants, facilitators, observers)
• Have and share the agenda for the workshop (e.g.
creation of the models: ~30 min, presentation of the
models: ~10min)
• )
Begin the workshop with the introduction…

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Working groups:
Organize the participants into groups no
larger than five. Each group works
together to create the business origami
model.
Group and organize the participants
Historians:
Designate a few individuals
responsible for listening, observing,
and documenting the activity (taking
notes & pictures).

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The experience of modeling the eco-system is the critical deliverable.
Your final result is the model representing the current state of the service or system, which helps you
uncover opportunities for improvement and explore new possibilities.
Outcome: A model of an eco-system
Focus more on doing, not talking: Instead of just talking, encourage the teams to simulate their talking points
using the models on the table.

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Allocate about 15min for each team to share their artifacts with others who participated. Sharing
session and a follow-up discussion will help identify possible similarities and differences between
the artifacts. It also helps with defining the next steps.
Presentation of the models

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Collection of the facts about:
 People
 Places
 Habits
 Interactions
 Pain points
 Opportunities
Additional outputs
Journey or empathy map:
 From the insights collected during this
activity your users’ journey map or
empathy map can be created
Collection of the facts about hotel manager’s work day
Draft of the empathy map

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Output: Personas
Persona:
 You may gather enough
information to start building your
persona(s) profile

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Business Origami with Anchors & Accelerators
Use Anchors and Accelerators to identify pain points and
constraints, capture desirable conditions, then group
and vote on what should be tackled first.
Anchors & Accelerators
The Business Origami activity helped us map-out the
system implementation process, see the things that
slow us down, zoom-out, see the opportunities and
think about the process differently.
Business Origami

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PRACTICE WORKSHOP
Research Topic:
The lunch eating habits at work

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• HR is launching a new initiative to promote healthy eating habits at
work: the Healthy Workforce program.
• First they want to study employees’ lunch eating habits.
• They will use this information to determine if bad eating habits
influence employees’ health, productivity, and job satisfaction.
• You will use Business Origami method to map out what we know
about employees’ lunch behaviors:
Where and how they spend their lunch time
Context for the study

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• Map out the employees’ typical lunchtime behavior (the “eco-system”)
• Where do people eat?
• Who do people eat with?
• What and how do people eat at lunch?
• How is technology involved in the above?
• Map out employee’s interactions: with others, with objects and technology
• Learn about the existing behaviors, understand the habits
• Explore new eating possibilities, discover opportunities for improvement
Goals

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Building the artifact
We will build an eco-system model that looks similar to these:
Images credits – Dave Grey

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Example
Bob
Cafeteria
Employee
Susie
Mia
“Christina’s”
Restaurant
Employee
Cafeteria
Meeting
Room
Susie orders
catering
Provides the
order list for
10 people
Asks for
food
allergies & #
of people to
order for
Takes the
sandwich
order
Bob places
a sandwich
order

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1. Let’s organize ourselves into 2 groups :
• “Team Red” and “Team Blue”
• All team members will work together to create a map, document the
interactions, and note obstacles and opportunities
Workshop agenda
3. Present the artifacts (20 min)
10 min for each team
▪ Present your model to others
(10 min per team)
2. Map (model) creation (30 min)
• Create a model of your “ecosystem”
• Document pain points, obstacles,
and opportunities

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Modeling of the “eco-system”
Identify:
- People – Who do you eat your lunch with? Who
do you interact with?
- Places – Where do you eat your lunch? (on and
off the campus)
Write down:
- Interactions – How do you interact with others?
What technology you use to order your lunch? How
do you communicate with others?
- Describe the pain points
- Capture opportunities
1. Actors
2. Places
3. Technology
4. Interactions
5. Communication tools
6. Value Exchange
7. Pain Points
8. Opportunities

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“Actors”
Julee
25 yr. old, very
social, likes going
out for lunch
Monica
Julee’s friend
Cafeteria
employee
• Use business origami icons (“the cut-out”)
• Name people you interact with during your
lunch
• Write relevant information on the icons or space
• Place & secure the icons on the board
• Draw arrows between the icons to represent the
ways in which they interact and communicate
with each other
iFratelli ‘s
Delivery person

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Places and technology
• Write comments on the cut-outs, board or sticky notes to help explain any important details.

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Roles & responsibilities
Historians:
 Observe & listen
 Take notes
 Take pictures
 Ask probing questions and make
suggestions
“Red” and “Blue” Groups:
 Create a map
 Work with business origami
icons
 Write down interactions and
details
 Identify the pain points

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• Business Origami: Learning, Empathizing, and Building with Users
• Business Origami - paper prototyping for systems and service design
• Business Origami - SAP User Experience Community
• Experiential Value: Introduce and elicit ideas (Business Origami)
• Business Origami - UX Week 2011 Workshop
More Information

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BUSINESS ORIGAMI CUT-OUTS
Examples of business origami icons that represent different actors, places, and
technology. (Credit: SAP)

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Thank you!