On Wednesday 3 March 2021 at 6pm, we hosted a special Service Design event to celebrate Services week (1st to the 5th March) this year.
It was our biggest audience ever with 100+! Some people from all over Scotland, the UK, but also Cairo, Akron (Ohio), Norway, Mumbai and Berlin!
On the evening we had 4 talks
An introduction to the Scottish Approach to Service Design (SAtSD)
By Serena Nüsing, service designer at the Scottish Government
Some resources you can look at:
- The Scottish Approach to Service Design (PDF)
- A Scottish Approach to designing public services– mygov.scot resources
- The Scottish Approach to Service Design (SAtSD) – gov.scot
“When we started this, we just called it The Scottish Approach to Service Design, because civil servants in Scottish government had a philosophy called the Scottish Approach to Government and I was trying to explain to them why design connected to how they thought, so I connected the two things and it stuck.” – Cat Macaulay
The quote above comes from this video of Cat Macaulay’s talk at the Accessibility Scotland conference in November 2019 – worth a watch!
Links to the slides
Collecting practitioner stories of service design in the public and third sector
Angela F. Orviz (service design freelancer), Serena Nüsing (service designer at the Scottish Government) and Stéphanie Krus (service designer at Scottish Enterprise) presented their research and how they are trying to get the service design community in Scotland involved.
You can learn more on the website about the project.
There were 3 questions for the audience during the session:
- What would you like to learn about service design practice in Scotland?
- How could our project be useful for you?
- How can we make our project more accessible?
You can answer them on the Jam board. (The 4th question is related to Duncan’s talk)
Link to the slides
Links from the talk
- Check the website
- Join the mailing list
- Email them: practitionerstories@gmail.com
- Follow them on Twitter @PractitionerSt1
- Follow them on Medium: Practitioner Stories
Links from the chat
- The Seinfeld chronicles
- Otter.ai (automatic transcriptions)
- What service design IS and what it IS NOT
Glasgow’s future stories: Social Innovation & Participatory Democracy in 2030
GSA students Neal Cameron, Pauline Barbier and Stas MacLeod presented their recent project. It’s a joint project between current and graduate students from GSA and two designers from Glasgow’s Centre for Civic Innovation.
You can learn more on this website for the project.
Collaborative Futures: slides of the presentation (PDF)
Links from the slides
Service design and the Mario complex
Duncan Stephen, User Experience Manager at the University of Edinburgh, told us more about his blog post Service design and the Mario complex, exploring the similarities and differences between user experience and service design.
He had a question for the audience: “Should we be more like plumbers, or saviours”
You can answer on the Jam board
Link to the slides
Some extra resources about Service Design
What is service design?
- Digital 9 Common Myths about Service Design – Scottish Government Digital Blog
- Service Design. Excuse me… what?. “ – by Mariel Macia
- Service Design. Translators across people, business and tech – by Mariel Macia
How does it compare with other roles?
- Comparing service design and business analysis – by Ben Holliday
- Service Design and UX Design: What’s the Difference? – by DesignLab
Want to become a Service Designer?
Here are some links that could help:
- Become a service designer in government: step by step – Design in government Blog
- How to create a portfolio to apply for a design role in government – Design in government Blog
- How can you support people interested in service design? – Design in government Blog
- Resources for further learning on service design (Google doc with more resources)
- Service Design: A Reading List – by Mike Press
- A common language to understand services – by Kate Tarling
- “What advice would you give to service design students? “ – by Kirsty Joan Sinclair
Some examples of service design
- Videos from the Youtube channel of UK Design Gov
- Using service design to defeat death – by Carl Burton
- Moving the US Passport Renewal Experience Online – by US Digital Service
- Designing the child funeral fund service – by Adam Silver
- Service Design: Pushing Us Beyond the Familiar – by Jared Spool
Keep an eye on the events organised for the Services week from 1st to 5th March, it’s free but you have to be a civil servant to attend: Digital Get involved with Services Week 2021 – Digital