Design Council Chairman Sir Michael Bichard on overcoming obstacles to innovation in public services
Fromerly Design Council Chief Designer, Dr Andrea Siodmok, thinks about whether services are a hotbed for creativity
Design Council Head of Knowledge and Research, Ruth Flood, on what design can add to the public sector
Investment in public services has increased dramatically over the last decade, but today’s services must respond to new challenges including a low carbon economy, an ageing population and the rising demands of service users. These pressures make innovation essential – public services must be designed to meet the complex needs of users while delivering cost efficiencies.
Read a briefing on the role of design in public services
The beauty of service design: 'If I fall asleep on the flight, can you take my socks off? It stops me snoring.'
Read about service design at Virgin Atlantic in Issue 3 of Design Council magazine, Winter 2007.
John Thackara, Director of Doors of Perception and Director of Dott07 on transforming public services.
Dott 07 (Designs of the time 2007), a year of community projects, events and exhibitions based in North East England, explored what life in a sustainable region could be like – and how design can help us get there. Service design tools and techniques were used in projects involving local farmers, schools, transport providers and small businesses. The Dott Manual starts by asking 'Wouldn't it be great if ...' and shows how design has helped from there.
Phd student Lauren Tan is working on capturing lessons from what happened at Dott07, a year of community engagement programmes held in the North East during 2007 which used service design to look at how people could live more sustainable lives.
Lauren's blog includes her thoughts on the different roles service designers played during Dott07, a comprehensive list of reading about service design for social impact and a round-up of online coverage about designing and developing services.
The Design Council's RED team was set up in 2004 to tackle social and economic issues through design led innovation. In 2006, at the end of the RED projects, the team wrote a paper on Transformation Design which discusses how product, communication, interaction and spatial designers’ core skills can be used to transform the ways in which the public interacts with systems, services, organisations and policies.