By Felicity Devey, Institute People and Services Lead
Back in March this year, I was enrolled on a ‘Service Design in Practice’ learning and development programme with Service Works.
At that point in time the concept of ‘Service Design’ was a bit of an unknown entity for a Healthcare Professional comfortable practicing in the field of Sports Science & Medicine. But with the launch of the Sport Wales strategy ‘enabling sport in Wales to thrive’ I was being asked to reimagine my role within Welsh sport.
As the Sport Wales strategy comprises the intents of ‘being person centred – where the needs of the individual drive the service’ and ‘ensuring everyone has the opportunity to be active through sport - sport is inclusive and provides a great experience for all, it appeared that acquiring an understanding of user centred service design would be a useful addition to my professional tool box, but little did I know what was to come!
At the outset I wasn’t initially clear on the benefits and key differences of service design approaches, so let me try and explain what I’ve learnt along the way...
What are the benefits of Service Design?
Taking on this approach and mindset enables you to:
- Generate solutions that target the actual problem, rather than what you assume is going on (I therefore don’t need to emphasise the amount of effort and resource that can be saved compared to traditional service roll out).
- Promote inclusive practice through ensuring the needs of others, who view the world differently, are actively sought out and considered in the design process of a service.
- Encourages you to test your ideas early with real life users, learn quickly and improve so that user feedback drives the design process.
- Genuinely co-create! Team collaborations are implicit as well.
What are the differences about this way of working?
The UK design council define service design as “all about making the service you deliver useful, usable, effective and desirable”. And that’s something that sounds good for everyone involved in any public service offering, right? But service design isn’t just about what you do, it also requires a shift in mindset. Consistently asking who are our users and what do they need? Being explicit with assumptions we are making about users’ views. And seeking evidence and insight to better understand users’ intrinsic motivations and goals. And then there’s the structured process of discovering, defining, developing and delivering (as per the design council’s double diamond) - a reference that was to become our ‘north star’ on this learning journey.
What did we actually do?
A multi-agency cohort from organisations working in the diverse sectors of sport, housing, transport and women’s aid started out on the virtual course with Service Works. As with most learning journeys we began looking at ourselves. We assessed our personal styles: what was our learning style and mindset with virtual coffee meet ups to get to know each other and share the insight acquired. We were also introduced to Mural – an online whiteboard tool, and Basecamp (a project management and team communication platform where the programme files and folders were shared) which were to become invaluable resources.
We built up an arsenal of coaching questions through pair, group and observed role play. I was already familiar with coaching basics and had practiced motivational interviewing exploring ambivalence. But as with all skills these get better with practice and the course catered for all levels. And I also learnt to probe until there was a greater understanding of the ‘why’.
The personal coaching sessions with tutors on the course helped to identify our individual needs and supported us with work based challenges. It's one thing learning the theory in a classroom. It's something else taking that learning and applying it to a real world challenge. The coaching support helped with this transition.
Reading the supplied textbook “This is service design, doing” between the workshops and bootcamps stimulated and reinforced the learning. It provided a particularly useful reference for research and sample methods as well as step by step guides for ways of making sense of the data collected e.g. creating personas or journey maps.
Throughout the course we were set hurdles to test ourselves and apply our new skills. Firstly, we were rapidly introduced to design methods by designing a better lunch experience for our partner within 90 minutes. Then, over the space of the next few weeks we worked on improving the new starter experience in our organisations. Finally, we were let loose on a work-based challenge of our choice... The power of seeing how much you could glean from exploring lunchtime experiences with a colleague. These interactive elements of the course allowed us to practice using the tools in real life settings and gain invaluable feedback.
Team effectiveness and influencing key stakeholders was also covered encompassing:
- The difference between red work (the doing stuff) and blue work (the thinking stuff) and how we need to make time for both.
- Running a fast team briefing to ensure buy in.
- Developing skills in harnessing divergent thinking from a mixed group.
We also practiced pitching the key advantages of taking a service design approach to test out skills in influencing. The Service Works course is not for passengers; the tasks within the bootcamps, workshops and homework presented opportunities to practice in a safe space and build confidence with a new tool or approach, and with support encouraged us to push beyond what felt comfortable.
It turns out service design isn’t just about acquiring the tools. But it’s also a mindset, a process, a language and a management approach. And after getting an introduction to the basics, it seems to me like we could all do with a lot more of this. This six month course has created observable change in how I approach my work and, whilst I’m just at the stage of taking baby steps with these concepts, I feel committed to experimenting further and influencing the culture of Sport Wales through incorporating these approaches.
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite lines of the course: if someone needs to put a screw in the wall, a hammer isn't useful (and if you keep giving them a hammer it might put them off DIY for life!).
So, who are your users, and what do they need?