The Housing Option Centre in Lewisham is the council’s front facing service providing support and advice for people dealing with homelessness across the borough.
The service works alongside SHIP which works specifically with homelessness amongst single people. In both cases, we are dealing with customers in difficult high stress situations who either have nowhere to live or are worried that they might become homeless.
Our work with the Design Council was part of a wider transformation programme that we are currently delivering in Lewisham.The purpose of our transformation programme is to bring about change in all our front facing services, making them more efficient and customer focused. We decided to get involved with the Design Council because their approach seemed to offer new ways for us to think about putting front-line staff and customers at the heart of the changes we were making.
One of our key contacts throughout the project was Sean Miller, an expert design manager, who showed us how design principles could help to analyse our homelessness service and create ways to improve it, whilst supporting the work we were already doing.
The project started by bringing all the staff working in our front-line homelessness services together to share their experiences of dealing with customers on a day-to day basis. The session was really positive because it encouraged staff to think differently about the service they provided and see things from a customer perspective. Following this session, a group of staff volunteered to be more involved with the project by helping to generate more detailed insights into our customers experiences.
Staff got trained in how to use video to observe customers’ journeys through the service and record conversations with them. In total we captured more than 10 customer journeys as well as insights from some of our important partner organisations. With the help of design agency, thinkpublic, we analysed the recordings and edited a short insights film which highlighted some key themes and areas for improvement.
From that, a brainstorming session facilitated by Sean helped us come up with over 100 ideas for change. We decided on four to test out and develop and the staff who were involved in generating the insights were able to take ownership of developing these ideas into practical change. The one that’s moved on the furthest is around storyboards – showing customers what to expect while they wait to see an advisor by illustrating various scenarios and placing story boards around the reception area.
Being involved with the Design Council has been a really positive experience for us. Before starting this project, I had always related design to buildings and gadgets. Design was certainly not something I had ever associated with local government and public service delivery. This project has helped all of us to understand how the principles and processes involved in designing a building can be equally applied to designing a homelessness service.
Design is not something that local government should be scared about as an approach. For me, it is really just a structured process for identifying and understanding a need or expectation and turning this understanding into a practical change or new approach.
It doesn’t always need to be about radical innovation or taking everything out and starting all over again. It can be that, but in a lot of cases this project has shown us that it can be about small changes which have a big impact at relatively little cost.
First published on the BIS Public Sector Innovation Portal, 10 November 2010