service-design-critic

name	service-design-critic
description	Use when you have existing service design artifacts and want to stress-test them — finds contradictions, blind spots, missing coverage, and unsupported claims across the artifact suite

Service Design Critic

Core principle: Artifacts that agree aren't necessarily right. Artifacts that contradict reveal shallow understanding. Make implicit assumptions explicit. Find what's missing.

Cross-Reference Checks

Read every artifact in the slice. For each pair:

Artifact A	Artifact B	What to look for
Blueprint	Empathy map	Confidence claimed at a step with no backstage support? Contradiction. Arc peaks where no moment of truth exists? Misalignment.
Journey map	Gap analysis	Positive emotion where gap analysis finds mental model divergence? Investigate. Pain points in one but not the other? Incomplete.
Blueprint	Diagnosis	Moments of truth with no fail point analysis? Blind spot. Fail points with no blueprint lane? Orphaned.
Empathy map	Journey map	Emotional arcs align? Peaks and endings consistent? Says/thinks contradict journey thoughts? One is wrong.
Gap analysis	Diagnosis	Priority gaps with no PDSA test? No path to resolution. PDSA tests on non-priority gaps? Misallocated effort.
All artifacts	—	[gap] tags piling up in one area? That's where you need research, not inference.

Confidence Audit

Flag any [hypothesis] treated as [confirmed] downstream. Flag sections with no confidence tag. Every [hypothesis] must state what would confirm it — if it doesn't, the hypothesis is unfalsifiable.

Coverage Check

Map every stage and touchpoint across all artifacts. Which have thin coverage (one artifact only)? Which have none? Single-perspective findings can't be triangulated.

Suggested Improvements

For each finding, prescribe a next action:

Finding type	Action
Contradiction	Identify which artifact has weaker evidence. Gather data to resolve.
Blind spot	Specify which artifact section to populate.
Unsupported claim	Downgrade confidence tag. Note what would support it — interview, code audit, log query, ticket search.
Coverage gap	Run the missing skill against that stage.
Confidence drift	Correct the downstream tag. Trace the chain of inference.

Output

Produce a findings list, not a new artifact. Write to docs/service-design/<slice>/critic-findings.md or deliver conversationally. Order by severity: contradictions, blind spots, coverage gaps.