Building capability
Scaling user-centred design in the UK government
The user-centred design profession has grown significantly across the UK government in the last 6 years. There are now 10 heads of design and about 3,500 people in the cross government user-centred design (UCD) community. The UCD community includes 800 designers, 2,000 content designers and 700 user researchers; plus accessibility experts.
Last year, I joined the Government Digital Service (GDS) as the community manager for UCD. The UCD community exists to support designers across government and their teams working to design and build services that meet user needs.
As community manager, I help to provide a structure for designers, content designers and users researchers to learn from each other, collaborate and share best practice.
GDS helps develop and deliver services to the public and supports departments to transform their services. We are radically user-centred in everything we do. We put users’ needs first. It’s not just designers that embrace this mindset-it’s everyone from it and hr to senior management. Improving citizen-facing services and transforming how citizens and government interact is our shared purpose.
GDS started capability-building in departments through the Transformation Programme. Mixed teams from GDS and departments worked on 25 exemplar services. The aim was to deliver ‘digital services so good people would prefer to use them’. These were services like carers allowance and register to vote. GDS continues to support departments to transform services through things like the GDS Academy, which trains civil servants in agile, digital and user-centred design. Building capability is critical to support departments to build better and more efficient services.
User-centred design specialisms
Designers started by fixing the front-end and interfaces of services. Gradually, designers have moved onto redesigning services holistically — but this requires different skills and capabilities.
Due to the complexity and scale of design work in government, design is split into 4 specialisms: service design, interaction design, graphic design and content design. The specialisms overlap and most designers on a team will have a mix of these skills.
Service designers design services from end-to-end, back-to-front and across all channels. A lot of the work of service designers in government is to piece together the fragments of a service and work out how that service needs to change to meet user needs.
Interaction designers are specialists in user interface design. However, it’s not just the ‘UI’, it might be the pacing of a number of questions within a transaction. They help remove complexity where it isn’t needed.
Graphic designers use typography, grids, space, colour and imagery to influence how users understand and interact with information. They create simple and recognisable information hierarchies to make sure content is easy to read and understandable.
Content designers deal with words. They are writers, editors and superb communicators. In digital, the words are the service, so it’s important to get it right. Content designers communicate complex concepts using plain language and they make sure the user has the right information at the right time.
At GDS, user research is a distinct specialism and all designers work closely with user researchers. User researchers help teams better understand their users–who the users are, what they are trying to do and why they are doing it that way.
How we’re building user-centred design capability
Communities of practice
Over the past few years, we’ve built a strong cross-government design community. The community shares ideas, contributes to designs patterns, helps solve challenges, and establishes best practice.
Every 8 weeks, designers across government meet in person, share their work, and discuss challenges.
We also invite inspiring speakers from outside government to keep a fresh view. As designers are based all over the country, we move the meetup around. And we encourage non-designers to join us to learn more about what we do.
There are also specialist-specific meetups focused on building capability and sharing best practice for accessibility experts, user researchers, and service designers across government.
We also use online channels like Google Groups and Slack to share ideas, ask questions, and collaborate.
Training
Training has become an essential piece for scaling user-centred design across government. Both designers new to government or digital take part.
There are courses for non-practitioners to learn about user-centred design, and specific courses for practitioners on policy making, service design, user research and design leadership.
All courses are available to civil servants through the GDS Academy. The GDS Academy trains 1000s of civil servants a year at training centres across the UK: London, Manchester, Leeds, and Newcastle.
Sharing lessons learned
One of our design principles is make things open, it makes things better. We openly share lessons learned, the journeys we went through, and the techniques we use–so others can shortcut and build upon it. Most people at GDS are avid bloggers. Quite a few also talk at meetups, conferences and give lectures at universities.
Design artefacts
Other things that prove to be quite powerful are posters and stickers. They are silent, but highly visible support for designers in departments. They are triggers for discussion and reminders of our shared mindset. All of these are on tumblr, govdesign.tumblr.com.
Next steps
User-centred design makes up less than 8% of the civil service. While training and communities are helping to build design capability there is a lot more work to do. More cross disciplinary learning and sharing, and expanded training offer to help people progress. And an internship programme to help build awareness in design in government and to upskill early talent.
If you’re interested in a career in design in government visit @DigiCareersGov on Twitter. You can read more about the cross-government design community on https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk.
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Kara Kane is the UCD manager for the UK Government. She is running the international design in government community and organised its first conference.
