Embedding service design bottom up & top down - lessons from the field

Kate has now started in two organisations as the pioneer service designer – firstly on GOV.UK as a senior, tasked with figuring out what service design could do for the website and the programme that runs it, and most recently at the Open University as their Head of Service Design, helping them kick off service design transformation across the organisation.

In this talk Kate will reflect on what has been learned about embedding service design coming from both ends of the seniority spectrum.

Kate's role had 2 angles:

• Thinking about how gov.uk the website is designed to deliver better, more joined up services to users.
• Helping GOV.UK the programme understand and improve the services it provides to departments, to help them use the GOV.UK platform and improve the services they put on it.

GOV.UK was set up as an agile product delivery programme, and this mindset is embedded in their approach and ways of working. Getting them to see themselves as a service provider was a big mental shift.

At the Open University, Kate is the Head of Service design (to an organisation much older than GOV.UK, and again as the first service designer employed by the organisation. A similar situation, with my seniority and remit being the main differentiator.

In this talk Kate will reflect on the two organisations and two different starting points, whilst giving thought on what worked and what failed when embedding service design as the first service designer.

Themes:
Transformation, leadership, pioneering, strategy.