How providing tech support helped me understand our customers better
#serviceDesign
How many people does it take to design and build a service?
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/how-many-people-does-it-take-to-design-and-build-a-service/
This is based on a document I wrote several years ago, a proposal to standardise test acceptance criteria for our quality assurance process.
It’s written in gherkin format, because that was what we were using at the time. But it could be adapted to any format you need
This is far from perfect. I welcome contributions from others more knowledgeable than me. Especially people with lived experience.
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/standard-accessibility-acceptance-criteria/
NYC School of Data + UnSchool of Data = a weekend for #opendata, public interest tech, and service design. Join us on March 28 and 29!
Register: https://schoolofdata.nyc/earlybird2026
How we improved the exporting user journey on the Scottish Enterprise website
“Moreover, I am concerned that these attitudes may be more widespread, and indicative of a culture within the department that blames claimants for errors and fails to recognise the needs of vulnerable people.”
This is one of the cards in Digital Benefits and Disbenefits Cornucopia @DBD_Cornucopia See card “Queen of Trust”
#carersallowance #dwp #welfarebenefits #carers #uk #servicedesign #designdiscretion
I've put together a free 7-day email course on systems thinking.
It's for people who design policies, products, and services - and keep running into problems that resist conventional solutions.
Each day covers a different lens: what makes something a system, feedback loops, behaviour over time, how measures shape behaviour, boundary disagreements, leverage points, and mapping.
#SystemsThinking #ServiceDesign #FreeCourse #PublicSector #DesignThinking
As a service designer, I was initially wary of service assessments.
I feared they might be burdensome and bureaucratic when we needed to move fast.
In reality, the opposite was true.
Make the service standard work for you
#ServiceDesign #ServiceStandard
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/make-the-service-standard-work-for-you/
It’s tough being a junior service designer entering the market. I just talked to a recent graduate who is looking across Europe and even internationally. They didn’t find much. They don’t want to apply for slightly more common junior #UX design roles, given they completed their #serviceDesign MA.
DWP "Data Strategy 2023 to 2030" published.
"DWP has over 85,000 colleagues, 750 data analysts, and 9,000 dashboard users exploiting and interacting with 1 petabyte of data and 30 million digital events per day."
Want to know when the next Service Design Breakfast is?
I’ve now created a calendar for 2026 to which you can subscribe: webcal://servicedesignbreakfast.com/sdbc.ics
I realised yesterday that I’m a bit thin on the ground for the #servicedesign portfolio that I’m supposed to build. I’ve done a wide range of stuff over the years and my service design stuff only accounts for a small proportion. Not sure if I’ll carry on with that job application but will build the portfolio to encompass all of the other project and programme work that I’ve done. I had a modestly successful #blog about 15 years ago and I am quite excited to go again.
Early bird gets the worm!
Our annual #civictech #opendata #servicedesign conference, NYC School of Data, is back as a 2-day weekend! To celebrate a decade of community, we’re doubling the fun! 🎂
Mar 28–29 @ CUNY School of Law.
🎟️ Grab your early bird tickets today! https://schoolofdata.nyc/earlybird2026
This exercise is simple. At the start of any digital project, get the whole team – devs, testers, writers, designers, stakeholders, literally anyone you can round up – together, in-person or virtually, and ask the question:
Who are we willing to exclude?
#accessibility #inclusion #a11y #serviceDesign
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/who-are-we-willing-to-exclude/
PRODUCTHEAD: Bad service! *Sit*
» Bad services can arise from not realising the service and the user need have drifted apart
» GenAI shifts the focus from shipping products to stewarding living systems that are continually learning and adapting
#prodmgmt #AIAgents #dysfunction #generativeAI #service #serviceDesign 📖 Read more: https://imanageproducts.com/producthead-bad-service-sit/
Ask any service designer to list their top 5 or 10 people in the industry who have influenced them, and it’s a fair bet that most of them will mention Lou Downe. Lou literally wrote the book about service design in the public sector in the UK.
So when Lou shared the Good Services scale, it was news, and it was exciting. It's so useful, we made an interactive version.
Good Services Scale: an interactive assessment
#ServiceDesign #GoodServicesScale
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/good-services-scale-an-interactive-assessment/
In #serviceDesign you have to tell stories. Of user journeys, service blueprints, what our research is telling us.
But we frequently also have to *sell* stories: glimpses of what a possible future might look like.
The technology is almost, actually entirely, irrelevant. Imagine magic: things just happen.
Most of it is no longer magical. And we can use #storyBoards to depict that future.
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/storyboards-for-service-design/
Picked up some #servicedesign #volunteering work to show that I’m not just sat on my ass after being made redundant. Genuinely quite excited to learn more about this organisation and its projects. Won’t do my portfolio any harm.
#work #jobsearch
When we talk to disabled people, their disability is rarely what defines them.
Some people who run the businesses we support have a disability. That’s just statistically inevitable; around 1 in 5 people in the UK are disabled at any one time.
What defines the people we talk to is not their disabilities, but their ambition. A disability is just a facet of who they are. It’s rarely the central focus of their sense of self.
https://design.scotentblog.co.uk/create-inclusive-personas-without-creating-inclusive-personas/
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst