This is a guest post by Matthew Daniel. Matt and I worked together on a large project last year and remain great friends. Matt has a particular interest in public service design and that’s the topic for this post…
Public Service Design Roundup – 5 Cool Projects
As I have been learning more and more about the user-centred design process, I started asking why government wasn’t using this process more often. To sate my curiosity, I took a little spin around the web to see what interesting public service design initiatives I could find.
A good primer was the 2008 Making the Most of Collaboration report by London-based ‘power and politics think-tank’ Demos. They took the pulse of service design with a survey of nearly 500 service agencies across the world. Over 90% claimed to have involved users in service design or development, to varying degrees, which is a pretty promising figure. They also saw a strong tension between the participative ethos and the top-down, siloed way of working that government agencies love so much.
1. Australian Tax Office Simulation Centre
Surprise for all you Aussies out there – the Australian Tax Office have been running a user experience simulation centre since 2003!
At the centre, they use all the familiar service design tools (participatory design, prototyping and mixed-skill design teams) to refine their services. I’ve enjoyed the fruits of these first hand, having been quite pleased with new features of their online tax submission app eTax, like the ability to suck in the interest figures from your bank accounts and your payments from other government agencies. This is leaps and bounds from the simple form-filler of a few years back.
2. Design for a productive ‘third age’
Southwark Circle is a membership organisation for older people in Southwark Council, London. For a small monthly fee, members are hooked in to a variety of volunteer transport, social support and government services, all with the aim of helping members enjoy a productive ‘third age’. This service was the result of two months of user research and co-design led by Participle in the UK. Their manifesto, Beveridge 4.0 [PDF] , is an interesting read, too.
3. Improving the lives of people with dementia
thinkpublic equipped people with dementia with filmmaking and interviewing skills to get a deep insight into their needs. Emergent service ideas were a “Wandering Garden” and a Dementia Signposting Service which is being prepared for nation-wide rollout.
4. Designing International Strategies
While there’s not a heap of info in English about it on their site, Dutch firm DesignThinkers seem to have their work cut out for them, having signed up for three years with the Ministry of Economic affairs to develop International Strategies and Service Concepts. Would love to see what comes out of this one.
5. Children’s hospital design (Batman, wash my window!)
…and back to the UK just one more time. Evelina Children’s Hospital in London was designed with children and their families through the whole process, right down to the menus. Some cool features came out of the process, like fold-down beds in all wards for parents to stay over and window cleaners dressed as superheroes.
Would be great to hear some tales from those of you that have been involved in selling service design to government agencies.
About Matt Daniel
Matt works on information architecture and web strategy for a Victorian State Government department in Australia. Matt is interested in the use of user-centred design techniques for the developent of public services on the web and beyond.
Nice summary of 5 good gov initiatives. Keep us posted Matt.
The Australian Tax Office was a real surprise when I lived there for a while. I think it’s because they have long been used to dealing with people at a distance and perhaps an Aussie dislike for pompous bureaucracy, but their services are really pretty good, including most of their paper forms. The Finanzamt here in Germany could learn a thing or two…