Why lived experience should be central to service design
I’ve recently been digging into the Scene on Radio back catalogue. I felt compelled to better examine my privilege in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, which led me to their Seeing White series. It offers a fascinating look at how systems have been designed for the benefit of white people. I learnt so many grim things, including that standard means of public service design like Public Choice Theory first came to prominence as a way of facilitating the segregation of schools.
After that, I delved further into their Men series, which looks at patriarchy and gender politics. Episode 4 (Feminism in Black and White) introduced me to the concept of Standpoint Theory.
What is Standpoint Theory?
Standpoint theory is a feminist theory that suggests that knowledge stems from social position. Essentially, the people who see the truth about society are those who are marginalised. The theory is really useful for understanding the importance of evidence from the lived experience of public service. Too often this evidence is missed at the service design stage. Traditionally we have placed too much emphasis on designing services from the perspective of the delivery organisation, without valuing the experiences of the people who access services. At Research in Practice’s Leaders’ Forum on inequality, we heard from Nikki Hewson, who is a Parent Advocate at ATD Fourth World. Nikki spoke about how people with lived experience have a whole system perspective that is incredibly valuable. Harnessing that knowledge enables us to design far more effective services.
In traditional public service delivery the view from practice is seen as the default and objective. Privileged voices are given prominence and minority voices are grouped together. This means that we miss so much nuance about the reality of people’s lives. At a Child Welfare Inequalities Project discussion, Dr. Calum Webb shared how Pakistani families’ experience of poverty is markedly different to the experiences of Bangladeshi and Indian families. His post on the intersection of race and class is also excellent and well worth a read.
Working at the right scale
In the final Child Welfare Inequality Project event there was a question around how community development might work at scale. Could an approach that focuses on local strengths actually further entrench inequality? This Complex Wales post on why the story is the measure helpfully critiques the conventional approach to scale, and why a blanket approach actually creates inequality. We are all beautifully messy, so one singular approach can’t work for everyone:
“The closer you look, the more there is to see. In other words, when it comes to measuring complex living systems like people, a low level of specificity is the same as looking at them from too far away… Systems do not scale by just doing more of the same, or just making everything bigger. You have to work at the right scale.”
So what might an effective approach look like? This post by Prof. Dave Snowden introduced me to the concept of Epistemic Justice, where people don’t just share their stories, they are active agents in their interpretation. It feels like we need to move from a space where organisations own data into a space where we are custodians of data. Reflecting back on working at the right scale, if we get this right we can get to what Prof. Snowden describes as “human sensor networks that are culturally, experientially, geographically and ideally temporally diverse in both situational assessment and scenario planning.” That’s a big shift into seeing the people who access services not as a problem to be solved, but as a rich source of learning and a force for good. If we truly value lived experience, then we will be better placed to deliver more human, kinder and effective services.
