2. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
こんにちは, I’m Ariel
Design and digital leader & urban innovator
Private | Nonprofit | Public Sectors Digital Products
Built Environment Building Capacity
Service Design
4. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
Design is about how
things look work.
5. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
Civic service design is a discipline to develop solutions that
are rooted in insights about the holistic experiences of those
affected by public services. It considers people, processes,
communications and technology as part of the solution.
www.civicservicedesign.com
Civic Service Design
6. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
Policy Changes
Performance
Management Data
Public and Internal
Dashboards Design Research
and Deliverables
Funding and Budget
Branding and
Communications
Materials
Case Management
System
on.nyc.gov/hscasestudy
7. Ariel Kennan | @arielmaion.nyc.gov/hscasestudy
Design Research Report
11. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
Branding on Gear for Outreach Team
12. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
690
people transitioned
to housing in 2016
13. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
A civic service designer is someone who develops solutions
based on insights about the holistic experiences of those
affected by public services. They consider people, processes,
communications and technology as part of the solution.
Civic Service Designer
14. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
Where can you be
a civic service
designer?
15. Ariel Kennan | @arielmai
Design on the inside.
Federal
State/Province
City
My education is as a designer at Parsons School of Design.
I have worked in the private, nonprofit and public sectors.
I was a Code for America fellow in 2013.
Most recently, I worked a the New York City Mayor’s Office.
I founded the first municipal service design studio in the United States and also ran a digital product team.
This year, I joined Sidewalk Labs as Director of Civic Innovation where I work in the United States and Canada
My work has included digital products, technology in the built environment, service design, and teaching others how to design.
I’d like to begin with a story.
In 2016, my team was asked by the Mayor of New York City to work on street homelessness.
We started with an extensive research process, but one night is particularly special.
In New York, it is common for homeless people to be on the subway and there is a special team of outreach workers who offer services to help them find homes.
It’s February, freezing cold, middle of the night as the team heads to the end of the subway line with a team of outreach workers.
Some people are familiar, some are new, most ignore the outreach workers, other move down the car or say go away
It can sometimes take hundreds of contacts until they start trusting the workers.
These are some of our most vulnerable residents, often completely let down by society and the safety net.
Finally one man says he's ready. They take him to the car and now need to find an indoor spot
He can't believe he has his own room.
He takes a shower and can now begin the long process of getting a permanent home.
You may have noticed I did not talk about how things look. Design is about how things work.
This brings us specifically to civic service design.
Civic service design is a discipline to develop solutions that are rooted in insights about the holistic experiences of those affected by public services.
It considers people, processes, communications and technology as part of the solution.
On this project, this research led to many different solutions including…
Policy Changes
Design Research and Deliverables
Performance Management Data
Public and Internal Dashboards
Branding and Communications Materials
Funding and Budget
Case Management System
This is the design research report which documented every step of the process.
We also created this “journey map” to show the complexity of the service in one view.
Each dot is an individual and every cluster of dots is a service interaction.
Public dashboards help tell the story of people experiencing homelessness through data.
The Department of Homeless Services issued a policy report on homelessness, including showing our design process and artifacts.
Professional branding and graphics on gear for outreach workers.
But most importantly, this project was helping change people’s lives. 690 people were transitioned into housing in 2016.
So what does it mean to be a civic service designer?
A civic service designer is someone who develops solutions based on insights about the holistic experiences of those affected by public services.
They consider people, processes, communications and technology as part of the solution.
You can be a civic service designer inside government.
<click> Some examples from the Federal level include GDS, USDS, CDS.
<click> Some examples from the state and province level include Georgia, Ontario, California Child Welfare Digital Service
<click> Some examples from cities include MONUM, CDL, NYC
You can also design as a partner at nonprofit and private companies.
This includes Code for America, Center for Civic Design, Public Policy Lab, Nava, Coding it Forward
If you don’t work for one of those types of organizations, you can still be a designer as a resident.
Code for Japan offers you an amazing opportunity to start!
You can become a civic service designer and you can help your organization learn how to design.
I would like to share tactics that will help you increase your design skills.
First, learning the tools of design are very important. There are many great resources available online, and I’m sure some in Japanese.
My team in NYC created a toolset specifically for civic service design.
It provides instructions and templates that you can use for your own projects.
You can access the content online and also download a book and other materials.
One of my other favorite resources is the IDEO Design Kit which provides human-centered design methods.
There are also specialty tool sets, like this one from the Center for Civic Design on elections and voting.
And most importantly, you must practice the tools and methods in order to increase your skills!
A great way to practice design skills is by talking to the people who use, deliver and administer the service you are working on.
This can include meeting with people one on one, designing activities, and also going into the field to where your users might be.
And it can often include a lot of people! For the HOME-stat project, we met with 37 government staff, 28 program staff, and 7 clients.
If you don’t have connections to users, you can help create a “civic usability testing group” that recruits community members to be paid testers of websites and apps.
This was first started in Chicago and has spread to other cities including in New York where Blue Ridge Labs at the Robinhood Foundation runs the Design Insight Group.
I also have exciting news to share that Code for Canada is starting a testing group in Toronto. The announcement will be next week and testing will start later this year.
After talking with people, you gain information on the journey of your user and the service.
Earlier I showed you a completed journey map and I’d like to show you how we made it.
From our transcript level notes, we started to find themes and figure out which pieces connected, allowing us to create the first journey map.
Starting in this lightweight way allowed us to easily move items, connect pieces, and start to establish patterns.
From there we took it digital.
This helped us to see the big phases in the process and how they connected
This format allowed us to add more detail and also share with our colleagues in other offices.
We were able to show we were making progress and give early insights.
We next turned this into a detailed, designed artifact that was about 20 pages in all.
We’re good listeners, but we’re not the subject matter experts, so...
we hosted a one day workshop with a variety of stakeholders to validate the journey map
We encouraged them to scribble on them - both correcting mistakes and adding new details so we could refine our focuses.
Coming together is hard to do when most of these peoples’ days are spent responding to emergencies, so bringing everyone in the room was an incredibly impactful exercise because we created a moment to reflect and share.
We brainstormed enhancements to the service and gave them a chance to dream about change - change for policy, service deliver, budget, communications, technology and data.
Which led us to a final mapping of every single step of the service from end-to-end.
This was especially useful for showing the complexity, and number of steps a homeless New Yorker must go through in order to get permanent housing, as an invitation to go deeper.
Your research is not as valuable if it can’t be easily shared people you need to pay attention to it.
Different methods work for different projects.
Earlier I showed you the design research report which documented every step of the process.
This was required reading for everyone working on the project at different agencies so they would all know the details.
The Voicemails to Votes project created a website using Medium to share their research about the US congress communicates with constituents.
In this civic tech project, the team from Ottawa demonstrated their process to get to their solution.
As you learn to design, of if you are already a designer, or a leader who wants to include design in your team’s work, it’s important to start building a culture of design in your organization.
One place to start is setting a mission and principles to guide you and your team as you do the work.
This example is from United Kingdom showcasing their design principles. These are available for easy download.
The NYC service design studio has a clear mission of “making services more effective and accessible for New Yorkers” and a set of principles.
These are also available for download.
The people who do the work are crucial to a successful strategy.
Think about
<click> Leaders who support new ways of working and share with their peers and upper management
<click> Workers who try smaller experiments and are always learning
<click> Partners in other parts of your organization or external organizations
Sharing the work across your team and organization is a way to get more exposure to the ideas you have and provides transparency.
A great way to do this is using foam boards that you can pin pieces of paper to.
It could be a prototype, diagram, layout or research findings!
Whiteboards can also be a great way to share ideas and get feedback from your team and organization.
Opening the doors to others can be a meaningful way to spread design in your organization and beyond.
In New York, we hosted open office hours for government employees and nonprofits to come into the office and talk to us about their work, how they wanted to use design, and giving feedback on design work.
This collaboration has been very successful, with office hours often booked weeks in advance and over 100 hours held in the first six months.
Opening doors can also mean opening the doors to young professionals who are eager to work on civic projects.
We started the apprenticeship program with designers and it has now grown to include product managers and developers.
They work with the team on real projects for 3-6 months, building their skills and contributing to the wider work.
It’s important that you communicate in plain language, whether talking about design or creating design.
We wrote the Civic Service Design Tools + Tactics guide to be in plain language, and approachable by non-designers.
Plain language is also important for the things you are designing.
There are excellent examples of plain language civic services out there, including this one from San Francisco, which simplifies the affordable housing process.
The US federal government has a content guide to creating materials in plain language.
A very advanced step is making it easier for your organization to work with professional designers.
In New York, we created a new contract for digital, communication, and service design.
Proposals are vetted by design experts and only vendors that are recommended have a contract that can be used on an ongoing basis.
When an agency has a design need, the request only goes to thee group of pre-qualified vendors.
This makes a faster process and ensures that agencies are working with the best professionals.
You can become a civic service designer and you can help your organization learn how to design.
I hope today has inspired you with the possibilities of design.