At the recent Research Support Services (RSS) Conference at The University of Edinburgh, I had the privilege of both attending and presenting. Alongside Nick Daniels, our Senior Content Designer, we led an interactive session exploring real-world service challenges through the lens of human-centred design. This approach isn’t about quick fixes—it’s about deeply understanding and addressing the […]

Service Design in Government (SD in Gov) is a two-day annual conference bringing together service design experts, practitioners and enthusiasts to share their work and thinking.   In the UX and Digital Consultancy team, we have applied service design principles (in projects like Learn Foundations), and recognise its value in making the University’s digital services […]

At last month’s Web Publishing Community session, we conducted an experiment in mass remote collaboration. Using a technique called liberating structures, 40 people generated ideas, before sifting through them all and finding the strongest one — all within 20 minutes.

Last week I attended the Service Design in Government conference, held here in Edinburgh. This event brings together design practitioners from across the public sector and beyond, from across the UK and beyond.

At this week’s user-focused meetup, around 20 people came to hear me speak about my reflections on studying for a PDA in Service Design with the Service Design Academy.

Throughout 2018/2019, the User Experience Service has been collaborating with the Learn Foundations project team to undertake a comprehensive programme of user research with students and staff. Through this we have discovered how students’ experience in Learn is closely intertwined with how staff work with it. This post summarises all our work, and outlines how we have ended up taking a service design approach.

On Tuesday 8 October Duncan Stephen will talk to us about his recent experience completing a professional development course with the Service Design Academy.

This year I have had the fantastic opportunity to study with the Service Design Academy. This intensive course in service design has given me hands-on experience in new techniques.

We are seeking to better understand your needs to inform how we can enhance web services to ensure they serve you better. These services will complement and sit alongside the current corporate CMS. 

I was really pleased to have the opportunity to attend SDinGOV once again, and have pulled together a few thoughts and resources from the sessions that stood out the most for me.