This post is written by Debra Churchill, Engagement and Planning Lead at the Ontario Public Service.
- The problem: Establishing modern service design principles in government is not a quick process.
- Why it matters: Traditional structures and processes can lose sight of the needs of citizens.
- The solution: Thinking big but starting small and adopting a life-journey based design which puts the end user at the heart of every decision.
When you think about Westminster models of government which are governed by a head of state with a hierarchical governance structure, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada come to mind. Given how long these governments have been in place, you might wonder how service design could be established, let alone flourish in such a structured and traditional system.
Starting out in service design and being a public servant most of my working life, I admit I initially had an idealised view of how service design could be used in the government context. Of course, governments can pivot and change a couple of hundred years of history and adopt a whole new system of policy and legislative development! Well, no they can’t. Any service designer coming into government expecting that to happen will be disappointed.
Think big, but start small
What is exciting to see is the work service designers, human-centred designers, digital designers, and system designers are doing within the government context. I belong to an international design in government community of practice. In the last five years, I have seen many great presentations of the design work going on in governments across the globe. Designers in government look for opportunities to use service design and make the most of that opportunity. I think the key is to ‘think big, but start small’.
What I see as common across all the great design work being done in government is the commitment to talk to the end user. As service designers working in any context, we should never lose sight of this fundamental principle that is at the heart of any design methodology. This is the one principle of good design that we should not compromise on, but it is often the biggest struggle we face working within government. It is a struggle I’ve had many times; we need to continue to talk about and promote that the starting point is to talk to the end user and to keep talking to them throughout the whole design process.
Life-journey based design
There is a wonderful example of how well this works in delivering a service centred on users’ needs. While client or customer journey maps focus on the customer’s journey through a service, life-journey based design focuses on the end-to-end life journey, then on specific events, such as having a baby and the milestones parents face during that specific time in life.
“The end-to-end journey was mapped to design a transformed process for the delivery of government benefits and all activities and services provided to users as they navigate their new child journey.” SmartStart, New Zealand.
Life-journey based design truly shows the art of the possible and what can be achieved when using design methodology in government. What it also shows us is how successful you can be when you engage with the end user and work in the open to involve users in the design of a service or product.
For more information on life journey-based design see the following resources:
Life journey mapping — the NZ experience | Digital.NSW
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