Scottish Approach to Service Design

Working in partnership with people and communities

To really understand how people access and use public services, we need to understand their lives, the contexts in which they are accessing these services – whether that’s at home, at work, trying to deal with everyday life, or planning for the future.

To do this, it’s important to work with the people that the policy, service or product will impact or be used by.

There are two high level categories which support planning engagement:

• the people (and their support networks) who will access or use a service – either in the past, present, or future
• staff who are involved in the delivery of a service, such as frontline staff or third sector staff – this might include a wide range of people, including volunteers or outsourced service providers

Research connects the people designing a service with the people who will use it.

It’s important that:

• the right people are involved at every stage of the design process and not just at the start or the end
• we do research in a way that is safe, legal and supports people taking part
• we take time to understand and make sense of research together