The only Service Designer in Blackpool

A few months into my service design journey I feel quite compelled to talk about the massively challenging and interesting environment I’ve found myself in…so here goes. Working on health and disability, I have dived into a complex world of organisational politics, legislation driven business process design and user-centred digital transformation. All of these things just aren’t easy bedfellows (to put it mildly) and I’ve found teetering across those worlds quite an uncertain place to be.

I joined the team just as discovery was coming to an end, not quite realising that this is tough place to start as a lot of shaping design decisions around user research has already happened. I flung myself into it like a lunatic nevertheless with sticky laminated service users, touch points…the lot. After a bit of a bumbling ‘why isn’t my routine working anymore` feeling then the next earth shattering realisation came. People don’t know what I am or what I do? How am I not an Interaction Designer or a Business Analyst? It was an immediate ‘prove you aren’t a vacuous passing fad` situation. I’ve never really been one for career status or ladder climbing. I just want to do something interesting so it’s quite easy to shrug that all off really.

Maybe it’s being kind to yourself and knowing that making change happen is tough…even when you manage to get everyone bought in and it’s a lovely supportive environment. It’s still blood, sweat and tears. Government change in particular is so bound up in class perception and personal ideologies it’s hard to get a consensus sometimes. If someone needs healthcare everyone wants to give it to them. If someone needs help to pay their way through hard times it somehow seems more of a dilemma for us as a nation. So there’s a big challenge in bringing people together to do what is best for everyone. It really is trying to prove that compassion and human-centred design saves us all time and money in the end. Taking care of each other benefits everyone. Pure and simple.