Linknote — — 134 words

Service design

Practitioner Stories — A self-initiated research project exploring service design practice

Practitioner stories — Illustration of a group of people holding jigsaw pieces in front of a map of Scotland

For the past two years, a group of service designers have been researching and understanding the state of service design practice in Scotland. Angela F Orviz, Serena Nüsing, Stéphanie Krus and Vinishree Verma have been doing this in their spare time and with no funding.

Their insights are fascinating reading. The study shows how far service design has come in Scotland over a few short years. But it also outlines a series of challenges the discipline faces for the future.

I recommend you read the blog posts to get a sense of the depth of the findings. They are a must-read for anyone interested in human-centred approaches, and making positive change within organisations and society.

To the team behind Practitioner Stories, thank you for your hard work on this. 🙏

Linknote — — 43 words

Service design — User experience

Work:

Demonstrating the impact of human-centred approaches — Further reflections from the UCD Gathering conference — Website and Communications Blog

The second of my two posts on my work team’s blog about UCD Gathering, the remote conference I attended in October.

This blog post covers the third theme I wanted to highlight: how we can better demonstrate the business impact of human-centred approaches.

Linknote — — 101 words

Business — Content design — Human-centred approaches — Technology

The complex task of simplicity — Paul Taylor

Sainsbury's Basics food packaging - washing powder, flower, canned tomatoes

It is human nature to add things, making them more complex. This feels like you’re doing something, but actually you’re probably making the situation worse.

We see this in web design. People like adding pages to their websites because it feels productive. But actually, the most effective websites are the ones with fewer, simpler pages.

The same can be true for any design, including the way we structure our work.

We often anchor around the wrong thing. That’s why some big institutions have no chance — they are hit by random plans and transformations rather than anchoring around purpose and iteration.

Linknote — — 130 words

Business — Human-centred approaches

The return on investment of design-led change — David Ayre — FutureGov

How design can be used instead of traditional change management methods.

In the same way that design-led change isn’t just about hiring designers, it also shouldn’t be thought of as a specialist or localised resource (like a design team). Creativity and thinking about design as a state of mind is more a competence that should be part of the fabric of every 21st-century organisation.

My thinking on this has changed a lot over the years. In the past I might have thought that having a strong design team was the way forward. But that’s just creating another silo.

Now I see the real job as finding ways to empower the entire organisation to think like a designer, and help them make the right decisions for the right reasons.

Linknote — — 90 words

Business — Digital — Human-centred approaches

Building a design team from scratch in a large and complex organisation — Simon Dixon

I especially like the points this article makes about why design needs to go beyond digital.

Even though I have worked primarily in digital teams, I have always believed in making things better not just digital. In health especially, we need to remember that people are complex human beings in a whole variety of circumstances and not simply a collection of user needs.

More food for thought as I begin thinking more about how we need to move beyond individual user needs and design for something that goes beyond that.

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Business — Human-centred approaches

Nine ways to unlock creativity in your organisation

A reminder why finding the right problem is often more important than finding the right ideas.

[M]ost of our organisations don’t suffer from a lack of ideas, they suffer from a lack of process that identifies the ideas worth having…

Creativity is not innovation. Creativity is a prerequisite for sure. Innovation, however, is the practical application of creativity.