theTeam.

Have you called the Inland Revenue helpline recently? A human voice answers after only three rings. Used NHS Direct? It helps thousands of patients avoid the wait for a GP appointment. Talked to your kids about school ICT? They’ll describe real-time weather online via satellite. Surprised? Perhaps not, but for many of us, public services for citizens are approaching those expected by customers – a good, consistent experience delivered on demand. And design is at the centre of customer innovation and satisfaction. So what’s the role of design in public service improvement?

Government usually turns to change managers, auditors, HR consultants and IT integrators to manage change and develop policy. But are they the big idea generators and innovators that public services need, and can their return on public investment be measured clearly? Here’s a view from the sharp end, where every day public sector clients ask us to help improve public service communications, particularly G2C (government to citizen) engagement through marketing, where design is the key to making people feel, think and act differently.

Designers are the big idea generators public services need. They are catalytic creatures who absorb cultures and thrive on change; they discover and galvanise creativity in organisations; they think kinesthetically and analytically using their left and right brains; they sit on the hill or down in the woods; they have the emotional intelligence to listen, understand and translate service users’ needs.

Designers need to be hired at the beginning of the policy debate, when they can tell the story, imagine the future and get into nooks and crannies. Designers’ values ideally match those of public servants – they instinctively challenge to improve the way things are, with a passion to succeed. In the age of convergence, designers are natural collaborators who align the design of service, product, environment, brand and communications. And in an age of stop-gap interim contractors, the designer’s only motive is to do a great job, and share knowledge as clients come and go.

Design delivers tangible public service value and is easily measured. For public service organisations bombarded with targets, benchmarks, ratings and audit bodies, design is an intervention that can be measured readily. Short-term policy thinking doesn’t necessarily assist long-term improvement, however hard and soft measures of success can underwrite the design brief, because a brief with clear goals gets results.

The 2004 Phillis Review’s public service communication principles provide a good measurement framework externally and internally. External measures can include changes in perception and understanding, building trust and behaviour change and providing satisfaction. And internal measures include employee satisfaction and morale, recruitment and retention, operational efficiency and public money diverted to front line services. And the list goes on. The Design Council’s Design Index tracks the impact of design on stock market performance. So why not public services? The Design Business Association’s Design Effectiveness Awards have become an indicator of  organisations who use design to spearhead innovation and get measurable results. And there’s no shortage of public sector candidates. At The Team, we have our fair share of DBA awards in public services because of our clients’ tenacity in tracking the facts. And we proactively help our clients develop their measurement skills.

So what does it all add up to? Designers are innovators who can tackle big issues that will help transform public services. Design delivers outcomes and demonstrates a tangible, rapid and high value return on investment and ideas.

So use designers more - they are intuitive and accountable. The challenge for design buyers is to create a culture of partnership to use design instinctively rather than as a commodity. Then everyone will benefit from our designers’ world-class skills.