Some thoughts…
Over the last few years I’ve been co-designing in difficult subject spaces, from co-designing improvements to end of life care in hospitals with Imperial College London, to improving cancer pathways to co-designing future improvements for victim-survivors of rape and sexual abuse with Rape Crisis. Here are some of the things that I’ve learnt along the way.
The question we are all so used to being asked.
Service design isn't always the easiest thing to quickly explain to someone at the pub or at a party.
My favourite response when I've said I'm a service designer and researcher is “ oh so you design service stations, like petrol stations?” To be fair if that was a project I was approached with to design further inclusive service stations I would love it!
It’s tempting to imagine that all service design is driven by a power for good. The idea, you might imagine, is always to make life easier, bringing greater clarity and inclusivity, and reflecting the evolving needs of society.
Most of the multitudes of services we use every day may promise to make life better and easier, many do but many also end up failing in their promise — even sometimes on purpose.
We interact with so many different services from delivery updates to subscription renewals to various purchasing interactions every day. Services are there throughout everything, when we are feeling great and when we are feeling awful. No matter what, we still have to interact with them.
In the UK there are around 1.5 million adults without a bank account (Financial Inclusion Commission). These people won’t be receiving any formal financial advice and will find it difficult to access any financial support.
We all know that we should design products and services that let all users access them. But this doesn’t always happen. Why?