Designing a new service in one week
While the UK enjoyed a rare bout of sunny weather, in the south-west of the country in Plymouth, a multidisciplinary team from across Barnardo’s came together to design an entirely new service from scratch.
The idea we had was simple: to find those 19–21 year olds who have been in care but are not currently heading in a direction which feels meaningful and forward-facing to them. Then, do what it takes to get them there.
This was the premise, what we needed to do over the next four days was turn that from an idea into something we could put into use and test.
The challenge at hand
In the room we had frontline practitioners (project workers), a service manager, a senior director, a research and evaluation lead, a service designer and care-experienced young people (young people who have been in care).
We’ve previously talked about how important it is to create these opportunities, but bringing together service users, providers, and designers is not yet common practice at Barnardo’s.
Here we could make a different sort of space. We weren’t commissioned to deliver this service by anyone. It emerged as all good things should — from insight and understanding about what appears to be preventing care experienced 19–21 year olds ending up in employment, education or training.
Over the four days, we had two goals:
- To design and begin to build the end-to-end service so it can be tested and developed before launching
- To create a clear plan for how the service will move forward in the next 6–12 months
It was ambitious, and although we made a lot of it happen we didn’t quite manage it all — here’s why.
Our four-day plan
Borrowing from standard versions of ‘design sprints’, a process through which critical questions are answered through design, prototyping and testing ideas, the four days were organised as follows:
Day one: The vision
Creating a shared and clear understanding of the problem, our users and impact we wanted to make.
Day two: Design
Working step by step to establish how someone would interact with the proposed service and how we’d deliver this experience. As a team, we thought about how they would engage with the service, the kinds of things we’d support them with, and how we would measure whether our service was having an impact or not.
Day three: Laying the bricks
We started building parts of the service, such as tools colleagues would use with young people and how we would record outcomes. Towards the end of the day, we invited some additional care-experienced young people in to hear and see our ideas.
Day four: The way forward
We built a roadmap for the next 6–12 months, deciding what needed to happen before launching the service as well as making a schedule for how the service would be developed (i.e. when would we reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and make changes).
What worked well?
- Working out our differences
Visualising how we thought the service would work meant we could see each of our assumptions clearly. Articulating this early meant we could work through any disagreements and differences together more quickly.
2. Hearing everyone
We’ve worked hard to ensure that the voice of young people is at the heart of the decisions we’re making.
Not only was the design based on research with young people, we also welcomed care-experienced people into our team, one of whom had already worked with Barnardo’s although in a different role.
They brought their own lived experience into the design process and as an equal, paid member of team, contributed just as much as anyone else.
3. Honest feedback
We also invited two other care-experienced young people along on day three. We got some honest feedback at the perfect time; well before we developed our ideas any further and became protective of them.
Testing will continue, but getting rapid feedback on early ideas helped us both commit to and dismiss some things and develop the design.
4. Collaborating as equals
Heading into the week, I was clear in my mind about my role. As a service designer I had the tools, techniques and skills to provide a framework for those with heaps more experience in delivering and using services like the one we were creating.
It was not my job to come up with all of the ideas, in fact, I saw myself as someone who would guide and challenge but I was reliant on my colleagues to generate the content for what this service could look like (with a few prompts here and there).
What didn’t work so well?
- Progress was slow
As I alluded to earlier, we didn’t quite make as much progress as hoped. I’d underestimated how different this approach would feel from how services at Barnardo’s are normally created.
Often tightly defined in our service contracts, there isn’t the wriggle room, time or headspace for frontline colleagues to re-think a service. This was an opportunity to start with a blank page and do whatever we wanted to create the best experience for the young people using our services.
It needed real thought and patience. At times, this felt too slow a process for frontline colleagues who were raring to go, get out there, meet young people and just start working with them.
2. Fixation with being ‘different’
We headed into the week with a sense we’d be designing something ‘different’ to what Barnardo’s had previously done. Although this gave us the permission to question everything, it also became a distraction.
Were we being different enough? Different from what? On reflection, I don’t think ‘difference’ was a helpful yardstick. We should have been focused on creating something that would have impact, deliver positive experiences for young people and make the lives of our colleagues easier.
These were the things I had in my mind, but often found the conversation drifted back to this elusive concept of ‘difference’.
3. Balancing my own input
I am not the person who will be delivering this service so needed to find a balance throughout the week between guiding the team as well as building capability and ownership.
I facilitated more heavily on days one and two, taking a step back on days three and four. This helped but I was left wondering if there were better ways of helping my colleagues feel more confident taking a hold of aspects of the design.
What we achieved overall
We finished the week having successfully worked together to develop:
- A shared understanding of the problem
- The name of the service
- An exciting service proposition
- The service model — a concept for how the service would work
- Prototypes of tools for engaging with young people
- Prototypes for how the service will measure outcomes
- A theory of change — how we think the things we’re delivering will lead to the impact we want to create
- A roadmap for the things we need to do to launch the service
- A plan for how we’ll continue to learn from and iterate
What’s next?
The service launched in Plymouth in September with a small number of young people to begin with while we continue to learn and adapt.
Watch this space!
Amy is a service designer in the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology team. To get the latest updates from the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology team, subscribe to blog.barnar.do on Medium, and follow #FutureBarnardos on Twitter.
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