- Interaction design and service design
- What interaction designers and service designers do
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Interaction designers are essential parts of service teams that work to meet user needs, design standards and accessibility legislation. They also make sure all work is aligned to the service vision and that it adds value for users. They work closely with the entire project team, especially user researchers, service designers, content designers and software developers.
Interaction designers lead teams to design accessible public and staff-facing digital products that are simple enough for everyone to use and that work across multiple channels, devices, browsers and platforms. When solving complex problems, the role of interaction design is to see the bigger picture as well as the fine detail, how things currently work and how they could work. They know how to remove complexity from services and are able to explain ideas in a way that other people understand. They will measure recently released product features to establish benchmarks and to identify potential areas of improvement. One of the key responsibilities of interaction design is to lead on the direction of new interaction patterns, standards and consistency in how products are designed. Interaction design's core aim is to help government transform the way it delivers services so that they're more efficient, simpler, faster and easier to use.
A design practice that works out the best way to let users interact with a product or sub-service. This is done to make sure we create inclusive and accessible products that can be used by all people.
Interaction design removes the risk of developing systems that don't meet user needs by:
- Testing assumptions, hypothesis, and designs early and often
- ensuring the product is inclusive and accessible
Interaction design along with other disciplines helps us create products that:
- Meet the Government service standard
- Meet Government accessibility regulations
- Meet current web standards
- Meet user and organisational needs
- Are simple and intuitive to use
- Work in a way that is familiar
- Require the minimum possible steps to complete
- Are consistent throughout
- Are usable by everyone, equally
Interaction design is applicable throughout the agile delivery phases: Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live (as defined by GDS). In addition, Interaction designers work on upgrading legacy applications and rolling out changes to ensure Defra’s web estate is consistent and meets current standards and regulations.
Interaction design supports digital delivery to ensure benefits can be realised:
- Reduces risk, development and maintenance costs by testing assumptions and hypothesis
- Improves outcomes by facilitating design sessions to ensure a wide range of possibilities are considered
- Improves performance and reduces the number of user errors
- Increases user satisfaction and trust in both the service and Defra
- Improves efficiency through consistency and familiarity
Service designers work across a programme of work to design the interactions and building blocks that ensure a new or existing service works. They may also support multiple product teams to provide insight on how to achieve desired outcomes in a measurable way.
Service designers work closely with all members of a multi-functional team to measure good services and good service design. They will work closely with user researchers, interaction designers, content designers, business analysts and product and service owners to identify and facilitate a shared understanding of the problem that needs to be solved. This might involve doing user research, understanding the current system and articulating the vision and then synthesising the learnings from that research and distilling and describing the problem in a concise way.
The key principles of being a service designer are:
- Identify what the real problem is
- Map and visualise the journey of users
- Facilitate a shared understanding within and outside of the team
- Spot opportunities for reducing cost and complexity
- Help define the scope of the service
- Explore and prototype various solutions to the problem
- Design the service end to end, from backstage to front, in all channels
To help us understand what we mean by service design and end-to-end services in government, Scott Colfer’s Product Management Handbook highlights three principles from two key blog posts by Louise Downe Good Services are Verbs and Kate Tarling A Common Language to Describe Services.
A service helps a user to do something that needs to be done
The way a user approaches getting something done isn't always the same as how government would like a user to interact with it. Government doesn't necessarily operate in 'services' but more through a series of transactions – ie 'Statutory Off Road Vehicle Notification (SORN)' or 'Tax your vehicle'. Users mostly think in services: "I want to learn to drive", "I need to renew my passport", "I want to become a childminder", "I need legal aid".
A service name starts with a verb
When we design something we want it to be of maximum value to the end user, and we want to be judged by this delivery of value, not by the costs of a project or the way it was delivered. Services like "learning to drive" or "needing legal aid" focus the attention on the value to the user. When something begins with a noun such as 'Statutory Off Road Vehicle Notification (SORN)' or 'Tax your vehicle' then the focus is on the transaction. It describes the thing the government wants you to transact and the value isn't necessarily focused on the user.
Use the term 'service' accurately and sparingly
A service helps a user to do something that needs to be done. It also helps government achieve policy intent on behalf of its citizens with whom it has a social contract. Services are verbs, eg "Visit the UK", rather than nouns, eg 'Biometric Residence Permit'.
By taking these principles we ensure that we understand exactly what are 'services' and then the elements that make up a 'service', commonly referred to as the 'features', 'capabilities', 'activities' and 'technologies'.
Examples of services:
- Visit the UK
- Learn to drive
- I want to become a childminder
- I need to renew a passport
- I need legal aid
Examples of features (one step or transaction in a service):
- Applying for a visa
- Applying for a licence
- Granting or refusing permission
Example of capability - appointment booking, which requires:
- An appointment booking system, which may be a technical capability
- Physical locations or phone support to host the appointments
- A process for changing or cancelling appointments
Examples of activities:
- Finding out how something works
- Calling people for help
- Applying for something
Technology:
‘Technology’ means the digital systems, products, tools, hardware and applications we build, maintain and buy. Technology exists to support activities and capabilities – and enables us to deliver faster, clearer, simpler services.
Example
“For example, judged from a pure interaction design practice point-of-view, Uber is clearly an exemplary user experience. Yet judged from a wider urban design point-of-view, its impact appears to be hugely damaging, with vast numbers of vehicles incentivised to drive into the middle of cities, apparently leading to increased congestion and reduced public transport use. Seeing like a system, it looks like a product designed to get drivers onto the road, at the expense of more sustainable options. Needless to say, this is literally the opposite of what most city governments are trying to achieve at this point. In effect, Uber works for the individual – a car is always within range – precisely because it does not work for the city, as the streets are deliberately congested with drivers.”
From The City is My Homescreen
By working across organisational boundaries, Service Design helps users complete their goals by solving problems that sit outside the normal remit of Interaction and Content Design.
Service design
- Builds context and understanding of end users lives
- Brings visibility to customer journeys and the pain points that limit service use
- Highlights organisational/ structural issues that prevent good service outcomes
Service design along with other disciplines will help us create services that:
- Are easy to find
- Clearly explain the purpose of the service
- Set expectations a user has of the service
- Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do
- Work in a way that is familiar
- Require no prior knowledge to use
- Are agnostic of organisational structures
- Require the minimum possible steps to complete
- Are consistent throughout
- Have no dead ends
- Are usable by everyone, equally
- Encourage the right behaviours from users and service providers
- Respond to change quickly
- Clearly explain why a decision has been made
- Make it easy to get human assistance
Service Design is applicable throughout the agile delivery phases Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live (as defined by GDS). In addition it is valuable to use Service design approaches in pre-discovery in order to diagnose and scope out the problems that need to be addressed. Often requests are made to build defined things i.e. an app, a page, a service which presuppose a solution, working pre discovery allows stakeholders to avoid this issue with good problem definition.
Service design supports digital design to ensure benefits can be realised
- Reduces risk by ensuring the right problem is solved
- Creates efficiencies by identifying service siloes, duplication and proliferation
- Ensures user and stakeholder outcomes are designed into the service