PSI: why service design?
trust us, it’s a good choice!
Public sector has many reasons that push it toward changes. But, why do some governments decide to do that with service design?
Adding pieces to the puzzle: we already said what service design and public sector innovation are and we also explained the reasons behind the innovation itself. In this new story, we will instead analyze what brought some pioneer governments to understand that collaborate with service design could have been a good choice.
When we deal with public sector issues, we need to remember that usually “social challenges are wicked problems. These are complex, intertwined with many other problems, and probably not “solvable” in the way we are used to thinking about solving problems. In most developed countries, however, approaches to social challenges have two facets: they aim to address a defined goal, and they need to do it within limited means.”[1]
Thus, standard processes or old methodologies sometimes may fail in addressing public problems.
Service design is now widely considered as a promising tool to drive change in the public sector because of its democratic and creative ways of working based on a human-centered approach. A large number of local governments around the world have been and are trying to apply and embed design in order to modernize service delivery, innovate services and policymaking, and eventually change the way they work. Of course, adopting a service design approach in public sector dynamics is not easy and requires time, since it implies not only the adoption of different methodologies or new tangible solutions but a bigger and more radical mindset shift.
Service design helps people think differently about the challenges they face and how to move away from starting with a solution, focusing more on long term outcomes rather than immediate outputs.
To deeper explore this aspect of the PSI, I had the chance to speak with some experts from service design field, who helped me in getting a clearer point of view. I would like to share some highlights of our interesting conversations:
“ Actually, this transformation is happening very fast: in the past three decades, China has experienced incredible growth in public services. Governments and companies have worked a lot together to deliver citizens almost all the facilities they could have desired.
(… ) But in the end, they also found that in making all these public projects, there was still something they couldn’t catch, problems and hidden issues they couldn’t solve: there were still many complains from the users’ side. So Government got that maybe there was something happening, probably related to the service process, or the relations with customers, something related to people. In this case, they have asked experts to solve these problems, and they found that there is something called “service design” that can help them in dealing with all of this.” — Fang Zhong, Tsinghua University
“Public sector is more and more looking for service design because the discipline is nowadays strictly linked to innovation. If we consider “What does public sector use it for?”, in my opinion service design is useful to “streamline” and try to put users’ at the center, starting from their needs… Something that in the public field — more than in the private one — didn’t enter the way of working.
(…) The normal approach would try to streamline the process thinking mainly about own advantages, rather than final user’s ones, something that doesn’t work in the public sphere. Service design really helps to start from the final user’s needs and, as a direct consequence, to improve the whole process (always taking into consideration the different stakeholders). Review and renew ordinary processes is also part of the design intervention.”— Martina Rossi, service designer & researcher
“Service design is multidisciplinary: it embraces many other disciplines, so opening its horizon toward the public sector is like following its real nature.
(…) The discipline is already largely being adopted as a “weapon”: the reason why service design (in connection with methods and tools of co-design) is in high demand in this particular historical period is that it’s used to build bridges and restore the trust with citizens. In fact, if communities are involved in co-design processes where they are asked about their needs and wills, and they are also pushed to make proposals, this helps to reconnect together people and government.
(…) Working with service design is not just about gaining an improvement in public services’ delivery. The adoption of a design approach in the public sector brings freshness and acceleration both in processes and problem-solving, as well as knowledge from a different field. Public servants can learn in this way a new discipline, which also expands the horizon of their imagination, helping them to think more about possible future scenarios.” — Daniela Selloni, service designer & researcher
Novelty, change, methods, tools, knowledge, creativity, and trust: these are just some of the features that service design can bring in the public sector innovation journey. Of course, designers are not super-hero: they must learn as well from this new context, readapting their approach to different requests.
Stay tuned and discover HOW in the following stories! In service design we trust! 💪💪💪
.a big thanks to Fang Zhong, Martina Rossi & Daniela Selloni for their precious advice and opinions.
. have a read at “ Service design: from insight to implementation”! We found it really interesting and illuminating.
