Sofa conversations with Lou Downe
Lou Downe is Director of Housing and Land transformation for the UK Government, based at Homes England and author of Good Services — a book about how to design services that work.
Lou was previously Director of Design for the UK Government, where they established the cross-government standards for good services and founded the discipline of service design, building a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers across government.
Lou was nominated as one of the top 50 creative leaders in the UK in 2016 and one of the world’s 100 most influential leaders in digital government in 2018 and is a passionate believer in the role of design to create a world which benefits everyone.
They have a long list of incredible achievements, here’s some to name a few:
- Founded the practice of service design in government
- Authored the UK government’s strategy for service design within the Government Transformation Strategy
- Founded a £5M programme of teams working on service transformation across government — including the Performance Platform, Service Manual & Service Toolkit, design patterns, GOV.UK Frontend, accessibility and inclusion, cross government service design and policy and delivery training
- Created the public sector’s first ever Design System for the UK government design community to share and contribute to patterns
While we regularly talk about products and product teams, what we’re really doing is delivering a service across a range of touchpoints, technologies and teams. Service Design attempts to weave these different elements together in a considered and consistent way, while avoiding (or mitigating) service failures — the gaps between the seams. That’s what we will be talking about on our Service Design day at SofaConf.
With that, we couldn’t think of a more perfect person to talk at our Service Design day. We caught up with Lou for a catch up on the sofa.
Thank you for joining us on the sofa Lou, what have you been doing during this unique time?
Working! I launched a book — Good Services — just before lockdown so have been doing all the things you’d expect around that, and trying to support the UK’s housing situation at the same time
Jumping right in. What made you want to work in the world of design and how did you get started?
I started in design by accident — I was a producer at Tate and saw someone putting a sign up in the gallery that read ‘please don’t use your mobile phone’ whilst i was testing a mobile app. Form that moment it seemed obvious that things should be designed as a whole form the perspective of a user.
You are seen as an expert within the Service Design discipline. What is the most common question you get asked and why do you think that is?
‘How do you get an organisation to take design seriously?’
It’s a hard question but the answer usually lies somewhere in helping that organisation to see itself as a service provider in the first place, and then to understand what makes a good service. Which is why I wrote Good Services.
What have you learnt during this period?
That I should stop baking everyday!…and that the willing for designers to get stuck in a solve problems is a fantastic and amazing thing and we should keep supporting each other in the long term.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing those in the service design discipline right now?
The lack of ability we have as an industry to describe what we’re here for in clear simple language. This is at the root of a lot of situations where design isn’t taken seriously.
We are facing huge endemic problems as a society that need service designers, but we have to be in the room to influence those things first
Your book ‘Good Services. How to design services that work’ has become a favourite within the community. For those who have not read it, can you share a little bit about it.
Good services is a very simple book — its about what makes a good service.
Most of the services we use every day aren’t designed to meet our needs. In fact, most of the services we use every day weren’t designed at all
In the rush to create new and innovative experiences, services today have overlooked the one crucial thing we need from them: to be able to do what we set out to do with as little friction as possible
Good Services isn’t about ‘great services’, ‘unique services’, ‘thrilling’ or ‘magical’ services. It won’t tell you how to ‘wow’ your users with something they didn’t expect, or build something that the world has never seen before
This book will tell you how to design a service that your users can find, understand and use without having to ask for help
It will tell you how to not disappoint your users, and make sure they can do the thing they set out to do
In a nutshell, it will help you to make services that work.
There have been many book clubs that have arisen over the last few weeks. If you had to select 5 books for a book club, what would they be and why?
Because now is the time to brush up on our skills of looking after people around us…
Notes on Nursing, Florence Nightingale — it’s a great book about looking after people and taught me a lot about the craft of consultancy and looking after my clients
A large part of design is about working with, rather than against chaos and entropy in the systems we work in. I can’t think of three better books about it than these…
Chaos, James Gleick — a 101 on chaos and why it’s one of the most important forces in the universe (and businesses)
The Uses of Disorder, Richard Sennet — how chaos affects people
Jurassic Park, what happens when you try to control chaos, through the medium of dinosaurs!
Understanding economics and finance is one of the most important skills a designer can have….
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith — Smith is the founder of modern capitalism and invented concepts like shareholdership. If you haven’t read this already you need to.
What are you going to be talking about at SofaConf?
I’ll be building on themes from the book to talk about what makes a good service and how we get our organisations to take the delivery of well designed services seriously.
