Service design is no holy grail

The enthusiasm for service design has been immense for some time now. It's perfectly natural that a relatively new and definitively exciting field, which breaks new ground with new methods, also draws criticism. Is service design just a hype? Another buzzword without substance?

At last year's NEON conference, there was a dedicated track focusing on service design's entry into the public sector. These are positive signs, and we in the industry note great curiosity mixed with a healthy skepticism about allowing designers into public administration. Let's ensure that healthy skepticism doesn't turn into unhealthy resistance. Because together, bureaucrats and service designers can achieve great things!

Hege Andresen at the University of Tromsø elegantly formulated her abstract for the NEON conference 2020, rhetorically asking: "The new gold standard is called Service Design and is touted as the answer to all the 'ills' the public sector suffers from. Why is this so, and what exactly is so liberating about this new methodology? Is it new medicine, or simply old mindsets and methodologies poured into new bottles?"

What is service design, really?

A premise for answering Andresen's question is to agree on what we are actually talking about. What service design actually is and does can be difficult to grasp. We often take for granted that design gives us something tangible, something we can see and feel, but the design of services is the exact opposite. Services are often invisible, and they must be experienced.

To avoid getting lost in a deep exploration of our shelves of literature on service design (it's easily done!), let's see what the most common and generalized sources say: On English Wikipedia, one can read that service design is about planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication, and material components with the goal of improving the interaction between a service provider and its users. The Great Norwegian Encyclopedia (Store Norske Leksikon) simply states that "service design focuses on user needs. Designers develop services in the same way they develop products, and the goal is to create services that are holistic, attractive, and understandable." As service designers, we strive for both those who use the services and those who deliver them to be satisfied. So far, it seems quite simple and straightforward.

But as a service designer in the public sector, you must stand firm, because reality is naturally much more complex: The service being developed must function within a complex web of politics and administration. Responsibility for the area that the service is part of often cuts across ministries, directorates, and other agencies. Leaders and employees are deeply entrenched in their respective silos with their own administrative tasks, and are also governed by political decisions.

The service designer must therefore balance the fact that public employees have little time for co-creation and often lack a culture for innovation, with the multifaceted needs of users—and view the whole from a very complex administrative perspective. Suddenly, it's not so simple anymore, but it is in such complex situations that service design truly comes into its own. The method is designed to handle many factors with different dependencies, and to design holistic solutions that take many needs into account.

Nordlandsforskning (Nordland Research Institute), commissioned by NAV, has conducted a knowledge summary of service design in the public sector. This summary shows that it is relatively rare to explicitly state what a service designer or their client must be capable of. Nordlandsforskning points to the individual suitability of the service designer, team understanding (meaning that both designers and employees possess the formal and relational skills needed to engage in co-creative processes), organizational understanding (i.e., how organizations function and are led), and finally political understanding (i.e., the distinction between politics and administration and the complexity inherent in every decision).

From service design to public sector design

Service design is increasingly in demand in the public sector. At Halogen, this has led us to establish a dedicated department for what we call "Public Administration Design." Here, 12 people specializing in the public sector with backgrounds in design, anthropology, and public administration work. The establishment of a focus on public administration design is linked both to our need for domain knowledge and the desire to contribute to the professionalization of service design in the public sector.

Because, just as Nordlandsforskning points out: there isn't a clear definition of what service design in the public sector is, and it is a field and a profession in constant development. Anyone, from any background, can claim the title "service designer." Those we call service designers most often have a five-year master's degree from a university or college. In Norway today, you can take anything from single courses in service design as part of your education, or you can specialize and even pursue a doctorate, as several of our colleagues at Halogen have done.

When Halogen worked on the Parliamentary Report on innovation in the public sector, they developed a basis that was further developed by politicians. When the service designers got the report back, it was quite different, and confusing. Photo: Halogen.

Empathy, visualisation and co-creation as core competencies

One of the most important things a service designer contributes is interpreting the current situation and making precise diagnoses that accommodate many actors and their perspectives. One of the most difficult choices then is knowing where to draw the line for what one diagnoses. How far out must one zoom to know that one is not creating a well-functioning service in one place while making things worse elsewhere? Service designers are therefore trained today in what we call systemic design, a discipline with methods for understanding and managing complexity.

To succeed in this, the service designer must rely on knowledge and practice from many fields: organizational psychology, anthropology, change management, business development, political science, and domain-specific knowledge, to name a few. The way designers achieve this is by centering the user and uniting the various disciplinary approaches through this perspective. Service design is, in other words, interdisciplinary by nature. Interaction with other disciplines and competencies in the domain we are working with is absolutely crucial.

Among the service designer's core competencies, we find the ability to:

• Facilitate co-creative processes: A service designer never creates alone but is able to gather and combine knowledge and creativity from multiple sources.

• Illuminate a problem from multiple angles: By investigating and documenting problems and needs from various viewpoints and perceptions of reality, designers can facilitate a conversation that encompasses multiple perspectives in its analysis and development of a solution.

• Visualize: A designer must be able to provide a picture of both the current situation and a desired future. Dreams, images, and visions for the future are some of the most powerful tools a designer has to rally a group around a design process.

• Test and prototype along the way: The design process is open, unlike, for example, research processes that start from a clearly defined problem. To find the best path to the goal, it is important to test different hypotheses and continuously adjust course. This ensures rapid progress and reduces the risk of a project going too far in the wrong direction.

• Act as change agents: By organizing development work in projects that include those who will be involved, the design process can be a change effort. Implementation is important and requires both the right people in the project, but also often depends on support and buy-in from management.

The government’s digitalisation strategy requires a common direction

One example where all these core competencies are crucial can be found in the government's digitalization strategy, which is based on seven life events. Together with design colleague Comte Bureau and the consulting firm Rambøll, we have been given the honorable task of working on the life event "Starting and running a volunteer organization" together with the Brønnøysund Register Centre and the volunteer sector. The project, which is part of the StimuLab scheme, is currently in its initial phase, so it's not yet possible to say anything about results and effects. However, the fact that service design is central to the development work primarily comes down to three things:

Firstly, user insight is important. The volunteer sector itself must be heard, both that which exists today and that which will emerge in the future. Voluntarism is a multifaceted umbrella term, ranging from large professional organizations to small, volunteer-driven initiatives. Interviews that capture the breadth of voluntarism are absolutely essential for creating good and effective solutions.

Secondly, the future must be understood and visualized. It is challenging to unite the entire breadth of voluntarism, and especially the breadth of future voluntarism, around a single, common target image. With the help of future scenarios, it is possible to agree on a direction for the work. Such a future image indicates who needs to be invited into co-creative processes.

Thirdly, the ministry, the Brønnøysund Register Centre, and the volunteer sector must converge on a common overarching direction—a mission. Such a mission is developed with the help of foresight work. The strategy lays the groundwork for an innovation portfolio that involves actors from small to large: Small, voluntary organizations will find solutions together with the ministry and the Brønnøysund Register Centre. By organizing the work into a portfolio of development projects, we will create the new interface between the public sector and voluntarism. We must create space to experiment, test, and anchor. At some point, we must also withdraw, and then it will be up to the ministry and the administration to ensure further implementation. In other words, this involves a major change effort.

But what about the impact?

Back to Hege Andersen's question about service design: Is it new medicine, or simply old mindsets and methodologies poured into new bottles? Andersen's colleagues Hilde Marie Pettersen, Kjell Arne Røvik, and Kristin Woll point out that we lack empirical studies and have a thin knowledge base related to service design in the public sector. They believe that we lack insight into who service designers are, what they can do, what they de facto do when designing services, to what extent designed services are implemented, and, not least, what the actual effects of the effort are.

The litmus test for whether something is a flash in the pan or a lasting new field is precisely its results and effects. Yes, we explore, map, and diagnose, but where are the innovations?

Andersen & co raise important questions, both for us who work in the industry and for a public sector that will purchase design services. We have much to contribute to the restructuring and development of the public sector, but service design is no Holy Grail. Nor do we have any ambition to become one. But we dare to claim that a professionally skilled service designer, in collaboration with a courageous and change-willing administration, can achieve much. We also acknowledge that design's exploratory working methods and desire to test and experiment are not always compatible with current administrative practices.

No one to receive findings and implement necessary change

Perhaps the most well-known service design example in Norway is the breast cancer project at Oslo University Hospital, where our colleagues at Designit led a process that, among other things, reduced the waiting time for diagnosis by 90 percent. The new service has a great positive effect on both patients and healthcare personnel, both practically and emotionally.

In our own service design portfolio, we also find a number of projects that have yielded very good results and effects. In this context, let us mention two: Together with Bufdir (the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs), we have, among other things, created the popular digital service "Foreldrehverdag" (Parent Everyday), which has reached hundreds of thousands of users. And commissioned by the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud, we have used design methodology in a thorough insight process that expanded understanding related to participation and self-determination in everyday life for adults with intellectual disabilities. In addition to these successful works, we naturally also experience that some projects do not have the desired effect. Therefore, we absolutely welcome more research on the effects of service design. We are part of a field and a profession in development, and we want to learn as much as possible.

In some cases, we see that service design may not have been the right approach. Perhaps the problem was not of such a nature that such an extensive setup was necessary. Or perhaps the methodology lacked a sufficient opportunity for documentation and traceability. The weakness we most often experience, however, is that there is no one who can receive and manage the findings and results of the project. This can be because the responsibility does not lie with one agency or actor alone, or because the party who commissioned the project does not have the mandate to implement the change needed to achieve the desired effect. Who is responsible for this? The designer? The project manager? The purchaser? Should any of them have uncovered this before the process started? It is difficult, and probably not very fruitful, to point to a scapegoat, but our experience is that projects often ideally should have been anchored higher up, preferably at the very top.

Impact is delayed, even if the value is great

An example of a successful service design project where the major impacts are yet to materialize is the "Conditions for Driving License" project. We conducted this with Rambøll, commissioned by a coalition of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, the National Police Directorate, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, and the Norwegian Directorate for E-health. The project received support from the StimuLab scheme, operated by DOGA and the Agency for Digitalisation. The project proceeded, designers and bureaucrats made their findings, and the involved stakeholders were astute enough to even establish a program to implement the findings related to the digitalization of health certificates. A year ago, we would have unhesitatingly said that everything was well and the project had been successful.

However, then the pandemic hit, shifting priorities, and the work stalled. We don't know what will happen on the other side, when, or what it will mean. But should this determine whether service design is a suitable method? Well, we believe both yes and no. Yes, because implementation should be part of the project and its evaluation. No, because such complex, cross-directorate projects will always have so many uncertainties that all types of initiatives can stagnate, without necessarily implying that the method used is flawed.

Unsuccessful prototype was successful

Another example we want to highlight is the work on the Parliamentary Report on Innovation in the Public Sector, which the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization developed in close collaboration with Halogen and our partner Rambøll. For us, this was in many ways a dream project: to contribute at the highest level to creating value for the public sector.

The Ministry proved to be open and curious and took the trouble to provide adult education where our administrative expertise had gaps. As is fitting in pioneering work, we started by failing. We tried to prototype a parliamentary report early in the project, and it worked poorly. But this attempt became the starting point for exploring and learning why it didn't work. This gave us a better understanding of the process and how decisions are made along the way. The failed prototyping helped us direct attention to where it was most appropriate, namely towards the steps in the process where we could introduce value-adding activities.

Next time we get the opportunity to assist in similar work, we will also try an early prototype. The fact that it fails does not mean it's unsuccessful! That's one of the core tenets of the design method: we test early and often, and because we're not afraid to try something that turns out not to work, it gives us valuable knowledge about what we should do and where we should do it. What we've learned is that we must prepare the administration for our way of working. We must collectively establish a space where it's permissible to experiment, test, and fail.

Furthermore, the parliamentary report work has yielded several valuable outcomes. The overview we gained gave us great respect for the quality inherent in such complex administration. We hope we get the opportunity to share more from the vantage point we ended up in. Perhaps that can help more people lift their gaze from their limited problem and instead look at the whole picture? Because the report was an innovation, both in method and theme, it has become a reference document that even individuals without extensive prior knowledge of innovation in the public sector can enjoy and benefit from.

Experts advise, politicians decide

So, can we say the work was successful and had a good impact? Well, it's tricky to measure the impact of a parliamentary report. And it proved difficult to user-test it. We made our findings, mapped needs, and developed a basis that the ministry's people translated into report form. This was then further developed by the politicians, and when we received the content back, it looked quite different. In service design, we are very focused on being able to follow a red thread through choices and priorities, so here we were a bit confused. We didn't understand, and couldn't find justification for, all the choices made based on the foundation we had produced. Why this happens has, however, become easier to understand through the pandemic year. Public administration is built this way: experts advise, and politicians decide.

Again, it's impossible to definitively state that service design has been exclusively positive and valuable as a tool. But that the project has led to many positive effects on many fronts is beyond doubt. When we received an email from project manager Hanne Cecilie Tømta at KMD, where she wrote that the parliamentary report on innovation in the public sector was among the ten most downloaded documents from Regjeringen.no, with more than 3,500 downloads, and that the ministry had printed an extra run of 1,000 copies, we took it as a strong indication that the report work so far is successful and that it is likely that the service design approach has had a positive effect.

How do we define impact?

Whether service design "works" or not, in other words, largely depends on how one defines impact, and what kind of project and collaborative constellation we are dealing with. In the results report from StimuLab (fall 2020), one can read that projects with low complexity and few owners could show more implemented solutions than projects with high complexity and multiple owners. This is not surprising in itself, but an important reminder that implemented solutions alone are not a good measure of whether a project is successful. Good diagnoses and solid problem definitions can provide new understanding across agencies. New collaborative constellations and a shared worldview can create new platforms for development. The StimuLab report shows that this is the result after four years of service design in the public sector. These can certainly be said to be very positive effects of great value.

Lack of documentation doesn't necessarily mean lack of impact

So what can we say to Hege, Hilde, Kjell Arne, and Kristin at the University of Tromsø? Well, we at least agree that we need more empirical evidence and more research on mechanisms and effects related to service design. Because the fact that the research and documentation are not sufficiently available does not mean that the effects do not exist.

And we warmly welcome a continued discussion about service design. Our ambition is to contribute to the discussion with useful knowledge about what service design should be used for and how it can be put into practice, based on our theoretical expertise and practical experiences. Service design is not a Holy Grail that contains all answers; it is a solid, proven method with great potential to improve the public sector—when used correctly.