By Beth Fox
A frequent question I get asked about my job is, “What the heck is human centered service design?” My short answer is always, “I try to make services suck less for people.” It may sound a bit cheeky, but that really is the crux of it. So often, the design of services (be it a website, a paper form, or even that “press 1 for english” thing when you call a contact centre) is often terrible. Sometimes, when you’re caught in the difficult process of trying to use it, it feels personal… like it was intentionally made to be horrible.
In my experience, the reality is often that how we develop products or services simply omits a fulsome consideration of the actual people who will use them. The traditional approaches to the creation of these things, however well intended the team, often overlook the more human context of how they will be used. From a public service perspective, this is more than just a concern of poor user experience (UX). A terrible experience or interaction with government can fundamentally erode trust in public institutions and ultimately our democracy.
Human centered design (HCD) and design thinking (DT) are both practices that can help us overcome that gap and make services that work well for people. There are a lot of different definitions of HCD or design thinking. As a practitioner, I like to think of them as a set of tools that can be used in various ways, depending on the problems we’re hoping to solve. As well, and perhaps more importantly, this way of working challenges us to examine our definition of the problems we set out to solve, before we move to solutions. It is often this exercise that re-focuses our work on solving different problems, or deeper more challenging problems that really get at the cause of a particular difficulty.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been helping build skills within the Nova Scotia public service, and sharing what I know with fellows in the NS GovLab. I’ve hybridized my view to be a combination I call “Human Centred Design Thinking”. Others may be more precise about the method, sequence, or specific way of using either method, but in my practice, I’ve taken inspiration from IDEO, Stanford DSchool, my own experiences, and many others to help inform ways of teaching and using these tools. For me being a bit agnostic about the particular label means we can focus on the outcomes we need, pick the most appropriate tool or method, and not get too hung up on the “process for process sake”. I recognise this may be a fine balance, and comfort with that approach comes from experience.
There are a number of grounding things about the approach that bring value to the work we are doing. For me there are a few that it would be important to highlight:
- You must include people who are most impacted in the process. These are the people who will be affected by whatever solutions, products, policies, [whatever], we are designing. For me this is a non-negotiable part of human centered design thinking. Putting real people at the heart of the work, and continually being aware of the impacts of the system on the people who will use it. This often includes the staff that work to deliver a service, not just the people who need the service. I call both these groups the “people at the point of impact”. Sometimes design thinking can be heavily weighted on the “thinking” part of the process. While that’s important, I’m openly biased towards the people, and even more so towards the people at the point of impact. I firmly believe if we center our work around these people, we will create the conditions for meaningful impact.
- Go to the place where the things are happening. There is no substitute, no shortcut, no excuse. At first it can feel weird and daunting. It just feels safer to sit in a boardroom and discuss or imagine. No matter how extraordinary your imagination you will not be able to accurately guess what might be happening there or why. When you get out of your normal environments and places, you’re able to see, hear, feel, and experience the situation of others. There are nuances and details of those contexts that might be the key to unlocking a new approach later on. Just go. Be curious. I promise it will be valuable.
- Work in diverse and multidisciplinary teams. I mean diverse in a multitude of ways including background, worldview, skills, age, gender, life experiences, professions, etc., etc… Why is this important? It helps us overcome the bias or blind spots of any one particular individual or one profession and remain objective. It creates opportunities for generative discussions where the sum can be greater than the parts. And it has been proven, time and time again, that having a diversity of perspectives and skills can help teams deliver better outcomes. Of course this sometimes means you have to work harder within the team, to find a way to work with and trust each other. This takes time, and it requires humility to let go of the idea that your perspective is “right” or “true”.
So why is this practice being used in NS GovLab? Using HCD and DT methods in a social innovation context is a hypothesis. We’re trying to learn if these ways of working can really help to improve conditions in a complex system. I also believe that this practice can be applied in so many areas, the opportunity to help build these skills in others is one I could not pass up. It is by no means the only tool we’re working with, but it is important for me to learn if and how it can shift how we solve problems.
How can it help enable Social Innovation? For me innovation is an overused buzz word. It’s often treated as some kind of activity, a verb that you can do. It’s not. You can’t “go be innovatey”… nor is there one way to measure if an outcome is “innovative enough”. For me, innovation is an outcome, or even a byproduct, of working in new ways that maximize the impact on those most affected by our system. I firmly believe that if we focus on the people who are at the point of impact and solve meaningful problems, we will all be better off. If we happen to “innovate” along the way, that’s fine too.
