2022: The Service Design Studio’s Year In Review
The Service Design Studio within the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity reflects on 2022, and the ever-growing role of participatory practices in NYC government.
And just like that, another year has flown by! As we kick off 2023, the Service Design Studio (SDS) team is taking time to reflect on our work from last year and the lessons we plan to carry into the new year.
With new team members joining in early 2022, we started the year by aligning on our annual core seeds of change. This included laying the groundwork for our Studio vision, planting seeds for our future, and reflecting on the contributions we want to make in New York City government. By creating alignment earlier in the year, we were able to approach all of our projects in 2022 with a strong foundation of values, considerations, and goals.
Building upon our core values, here are the major themes that emerged from our work in 2022:
- Advocating for a more visible co-design practice in NYC government: Co-Design, a term coined by KA McKercher, brings people and communities to the center of the design practice and shifts power to make them decision-makers in the design of programs and services that will directly impact them. Our Designed by Community program is building the case for co-design of government services and programs. To learn more about co-design, check out this Co-Design poster we created!
- Building service design capacity through partnerships: This year saw the re-launch of our Civic Design Forum and office hours! Both spaces create opportunities for NYC government employees to learn about service design methods and design justice principles and mindsets, (Are you a government employee? Book an Office Hour with the Studio or sign up for an upcoming Civic Design Forum here.
- Acknowledging our power + privilege and shifting that power to communities: Acknowledging the power we hold as City employees and the influence that yields in the design of policies, programs, services, and products is an integral component of service design and co-design praxis. The Power Literacy Framework breaks down the five forms of power (access, goal, role, rule, and privilege) and asks where power can be shifted towards folks who do not hold the same power privileges. In each of our projects this year, we reflected on this framework as a collective team as a way to be explicit in naming where power should be shifted to make participatory design more authentic. Here is an activity you can do with your teams to reflect on your power and privilege.
Co-Design Project Spotlight!
January 2022 marked the beginning of the second Cohort under the Designed by Community Fellowship Program (DxC). DxC is a paid fellowship and project funding opportunity to support community leaders and non-profit community-based organizations in developing hyper-localized solutions in their community using Service Design methodology.
After receiving applications from over 30+ community-based organizations and undergoing rigorous rounds of reviews, Phipps Neighborhoods was selected as our CBO partner in September!
In the Fall of 2022, Phipps Neighborhoods and SDS worked collectively to co-design the contract’s scope of work, develop a program planning agenda, and conduct interviews to hire Community Fellows. After receiving and reviewing 55+ applications together, we extended invitations for six fellows to join the program!
In the new year, Phipps Neighborhoods, the Service Design Studio, and the Community Fellows will focus on developing a Digital Access program that serves the community’s needs as defined by the community! We are excited to share more about the Fellows and their project, as we work together over the next 6 months.
Community Partnership Spotlight!
In July, NYC Opportunity funded the Community Navigator Institute (CNI) through the Hunter Silberman School of Social Work. CNI offered free workshops for staff in community-based organizations, peer mentors, credible messengers, and those generally interested in peer workforce social service models. Attendees learned effective tools and strategies for effective, innovative, and holistic community-based care. Sessions were led and facilitated by Hunter’s team of Navigators — social workers with lived experience.
Our collaboration with CUNY and the Hunter Social Work School provided over 160 attendees with valuable training and networking! While the program was initially contracted for a few sessions in the summer and early fall, we were able to extend the program until November, hosting interactive workshops for a total of 4 cohorts.
Office Hours Spotlight!
In February 2022, a team from NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) attended an office hour session with the Service Design Team. Leadership from the NYC Division of Child and Family Wellbeing approached SDS to discuss strategies the agency could take to better understand and document the current childcare voucher application process from the staff perspective.
We defined our design challenge and scope as the following:
How might we understand the current childcare voucher experience for ACS staff so we can strategically plan for a future that eases the administrative burden on staff and families?
SDS conducted 17 staff 1-hour interviews across the four voucher processing units. After synthesizing these interviews, SDS formed a service blueprint and a recommendations report. We took those drafts back to ACS staff and leadership for a collaborative validation session to ensure we accurately interpreted and put forth recommendations that were consistent with ACS staff thinking. We refined the service blueprint and recommendations based on the validation session feedback and routed a survey to ask staff to prioritize their recommendations. ACS leadership has already begun to use recommendations generated in this project within key reports and requests.
Are you a government employee? Book an Office Hour with the Studio!
Interagency Collaboration Spotlight!
In 2022, the Studio worked on projects in collaboration with other teams at NYC Opportunity. We partnered with the Programs and Evaluations team to conduct interviews with past and current clients of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) NYC:ATWORK program. NYC: ATWORK is an employment program that recruits, pre-screens, and connects New Yorkers with disabilities to jobs and internships with established business partners in both the public and private sectors.
The insights from the interviews supported MOPD in developing a list of challenges, opportunities, and best practices MOPD could refer to and implement to improve their services and other similar services throughout the city. In December 2022, City Council passed Int. №681-A, a local law that codifies and expands NYC:ATWORK.
More Achievements
Meeting the Moment
With our team’s diverse range of skills in service design, graphic design, and systems strategy, we were able to lend our abilities to multiple high-stakes projects across NYC. Here are some of our favorite projects where we met the moment:
- In under a week, SDS provided graphic design services for the Asylum Seeker Resource Navigation Center, which opened to attend to the influx of migrants entering NYC. SDS consulted on brand continuity and physical experience design. Our team of 2 designers spearheaded the development of wayfinding signage, producing over 30 signs. Our team was intentional about iconography to cut through language barriers and foster an accessible experience for asylum seekers.
- Over the span of 4 months, SDS partnered with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the new Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. Our team offered communications, storytelling, and graphic design services to create promotional materials and develop communications messaging for Be a Buddy, their community climate resiliency program.
- SDS facilitated journey mapping and service blueprinting sessions on two mayoral-level priority initiatives including the Joint Taskforce to get Nonprofits Paid on Time and the Good Jobs Challenge. We partnered with agencies such as the Mayor’s Office of Operations, the Human Resources Administration (HRA), NYC City Council, and more! In both initiatives our team facilitated mapping activities and provided strategic guidance to help agencies make programmatic and strategic operations decisions.
We owe a lot of our successes this year to the growing enthusiasm of New York City employees to practice more participatory design methods, understand how service design tools can streamline their work, and how to engage with communities ethically. We aim to strengthen and deepen this work into 2023. Onward!
This post is a part of the Service Design Studio at the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity. The Studio works to make city services more accessible and effective for low-income New Yorkers. To learn more about our work, visit our website.
