Policy Lab - Service design direction and coaching
Improving the private rented sector for tenants and landlords
AIMS
This projects aims were two fold, firstly improving the PRS for tenants and landlords. Secondly supporting and enabling policy-makers to prototype - making things which they can use to show, or demonstrate, an idea to service users which can then elicit information about what might or might not work.
This project was in collaboration with Policy Lab who are a situated within the Cabinet Office which supports government to apply service design principles to policy making.
processs
My involvement with this project followed on from a co-design session focused on creating possible interventions which might help improve experiences of the private rented sector (PRS). These possible interventions were based upon previous ethnographically-inspired research. This enabled the participants of the co-design session to rapidly ideate ideas based high level understanding of user needs.
usability workshop
Based on the ideas generated in the co-design workshop we created rapid prototypes ready to put in front of users, these were both physical and digital. I helped the Policy Lab team to set up and conduct user research and usability testing with these prototypes. I accompanied the team to conduct usability testing and to further coach the team on their approach. We spoke to the public in Citizens Advice Bureaus and arranged interviews with landlords and renters across the country.
Embedding design
After conducting usability testing with both landlords and tenants we made further design iterations to the prototypes and brought these back to our key stakeholders. We ran a blueprinting workshop were we chose two prototypes to progress and created proposed blueprints for these. These blueprints were co-created with key stakeholders and civil servants and enabled us to visualise what policy, partnerships and design decisions would need to be involved with the roll out of any of these potential services.
Outcomes and impact
The insights and prototypes that this project created went forward to help inform human centred policy amendments.
Read more about this project in a blog from Policy Lab here.
COMPANY: SNOOK
DATE: June 2018 - September 2018
Project team:Policy lab and Maya alvarado from Snook
MY RESPONSIBILITIES: PROJECT MANAGER,USER RESEARCHER, SERVICE DESIGNER, prototype development, workshop facilitation
KEY PROJECT ACTIVITIES
USER RESEARCH
rapid prototyping
SERVICE DESIGN COACHING in line with with wider government strategy and position around digital and design
CO-DESIGN WORKSHOPS WITH civil servants
prototyping workshops with civil servants
Usability testing of early stage prototypes
Blueprinting workshop with civil servants and external organisations