Service Design at DWP

What is a service?

The CDDO has a standard definition of what a service is, for use in Government. In Service Design at DWP and we have adapted it slightly to better reflect our focus as a community, our adaptations are highlighted in blue : “All the things that government collectively provides to deliver an outcome for all of its users, through any path a user takes to reach their goal” A good service should consider:

• The end-to-end: from when the user starts trying to achieve a goal to when they finish
• The front to back: connecting the citizen-facing service; internal services, people, systems and processes; supporting policy or legislation; and organisational, financial and governance structures
• Every channel: including online, phone, paper and face-to-face

A good service requires all aspects of the service to work cohesively and efficiently to deliver outcomes

What is meant by an outcome?

An outcome is made up of 2 elements:

• something a user actually needs or a goal they want or have to achieve
• something government aims to deliver, such as improved people experience, increased trust in government or a new policy

There are 3 levels of outcome that all contribute to these needs. Using finding a job as an example, these are:

• the outcome you deliver as part of a specific process or step in a journey - such as a citizen registering as unemployed with a job centre when they become unemployed
• the wider outcome you deliver when you collaborate across organisational boundaries - for example DWP is confident the citizen is eligible for the financial support they are receiving whilst out of work and they are continuing to seek employment
• the overall outcome government and users actually need the citizen is in stable work and able to financially support themselves

An overall service outcome is often part of a wider user journey. For example needing DWP support to find a job could be caused by a citizen being made redundant when their employer needs to downsize or experiencing a change in their health which impacts their work abilities requiring a different job.

A user journey could be triggered by someone’s change of circumstances or aspirations, a news story, a change in government policy or a government campaign.

When government delivers an outcome, a user usually receives something along the way that has a policy intent behind it. Examples for finding a job include:

• Money - for daily living expenses
• Other financial support - such as discounted travel
• Advice - on writing a CV
• Training - learning new job skills
• Experience - volunteering with a local organisation
• Confidence - To apply for new jobs

For government or ‘internal’ users, the examples could be:

• Money - for travel expenses
• Training - to accrue new skills
• Confidence - citizen has support they require

Some services deliver multiple different outcomes at different times.

What we mean by things that collectively provide an outcome

To deliver an outcome for users, a service usually includes a number of different things

Usually it takes more than one part of government to deliver a whole service. On the way to getting an outcome, a user is likely to interact with things provided by several different organisations, functions and professions. In the example we have used of finding a job this includes:

• The citizen browsing gov.uk at home to find out what support is available
• A conversation between an agent and the citizen in the Job Centre Plus
• The agent using internal systems and processes to organise volunteering and training for the citizen
• The citizen volunteering at the organisation
• The citizen learning new job skills at a skills bootcamp

What is service design?

At its simplest, we can think of Service Design as: a user-centred approach to the design and delivery of services, which choreographs all of the people, organisations, products, systems, channels (and so on) that make up a service, with the objective of meeting the whole needs of a user as simply, quickly and efficiently as possible.

What makes Service Design different?

One of the common challenges we face when explaining Service Design is that many of the individual parts that make up Service Design can be seen as overlapping with the activities of others. For example, the activity of mapping how different processes, systems and people interact may be seen as synonymous with the activities of Business Analysis. Moreover, the activity of understanding user pain points and journeys may be seen as synonymous with the activities of User Research or Interaction Design.

Whilst Service Design must work closely with these areas, the job of Service Design is not to replace or replicate these activities. Instead, the job of Service Design is to bring together the teams that undertake these other activities (as well as their artefacts and knowledge) to understand how they all fit together in the context of a user's whole need or journey - not within the bounds of an organisational silo.

In other words, what sets Service Design apart is that it looks to break away and challenge the boundaries, assumptions and unintended negative consequences that arise when we design and deliver services from an organisation-centric perspective.

Service Design starts from the end-user's perspective, gets a big picture view of their journey and their needs, and then works backwards to understand all of the moving parts within an organisation that affect how well these needs/journeys are, and could be, provisioned.

So take a scenario where a user moves from one benefit to another, Service Design would ask whether we can look at the customer journeys from each of these benefits to understand common activities or problems that exist across both. For example, is the user inputting the same information twice? If something changes to their life circumstances, do they have to notify two separate parts of the organisation? Are there two separate teams processing the same information? Are they talking to one another? Here, Service Design is looking holistically at a user's end-to-end journey to see where there are opportunities for horizontal improvements to user experience and operational efficiencies.

Looking at another example, lets say that User Research has uncovered that a certain part of citizens journey is particularly painful because their are long wait times. Service Design would coordinate with Business Analysis to question whether there's a particular part of the process causing the delay. They may then coordinate between technical, policy and legal teams to understand why that part of the process exists and work to create a better future state.

Here, Service Design is looking front to back, looking at how front-stage activities that users interact with are being affected by back-stage activities that colleagues interact with.

What is service design?

At its simplest, we can think of Service Design as: a user-centred approach to the design and delivery of services, which choreographs all of the people, organisations, products, systems, channels (and so on) that make up a service, with the objective of meeting the whole needs of a user as simply, quickly and efficiently as possible.

What makes Service Design different?

One of the common challenges we face when explaining Service Design is that many of the individual parts that make up Service Design can be seen as overlapping with the activities of others. For example, the activity of mapping how different processes, systems and people interact may be seen as synonymous with the activities of Business Analysis. Moreover, the activity of understanding user pain points and journeys may be seen as synonymous with the activities of User Research or Interaction Design.

Whilst Service Design must work closely with these areas, the job of Service Design is not to replace or replicate these activities. Instead, the job of Service Design is to bring together the teams that undertake these other activities (as well as their artefacts and knowledge) to understand how they all fit together in the context of a user's whole need or journey - not within the bounds of an organisational silo.

In other words, what sets Service Design apart is that it looks to break away and challenge the boundaries, assumptions and unintended negative consequences that arise when we design and deliver services from an organisation-centric perspective.

Service Design starts from the end-user's perspective, gets a big picture view of their journey and their needs, and then works backwards to understand all of the moving parts within an organisation that affect how well these needs/journeys are, and could be, provisioned.

So take a scenario where a user moves from one benefit to another, Service Design would ask whether we can look at the customer journeys from each of these benefits to understand common activities or problems that exist across both. For example, is the user inputting the same information twice? If something changes to their life circumstances, do they have to notify two separate parts of the organisation? Are there two separate teams processing the same information? Are they talking to one another? Here, Service Design is looking holistically at a user's end-to-end journey to see where there are opportunities for horizontal improvements to user experience and operational efficiencies.

Looking at another example, lets say that User Research has uncovered that a certain part of citizens journey is particularly painful because their are long wait times. Service Design would coordinate with Business Analysis to question whether there's a particular part of the process causing the delay. They may then coordinate between technical, policy and legal teams to understand why that part of the process exists and work to create a better future state.

Here, Service Design is looking front to back, looking at how front-stage activities that users interact with are being affected by back-stage activities that colleagues interact with.