Scottish Approach to Service Design

Why we need this approach

Designing services in the public sector is not just about satisfying people’s immediate needs when they are in crisis. It’s about thinking about how to prevent issues happening in the first place and supporting people to thrive.

Public services are provided by lots of organisations. For this reason, it can often be difficult to get the right parts of the public sector to align well with a person’s needs and circumstances. Individual organisations might be doing a good job of meeting people’s needs for their part of the ‘service journey’. However, if all the organisations involved can’t see and align to the person’s whole journey to provide the support they need, it can lead to problems. Making sense of this as an organisation can be hard.

For someone trying to access services, sometimes life events or circumstances can cause a huge amount of stress. This may involve making big decisions at a time when making decisions feels especially difficult. For example, an injury can lead to time off work, possibly even loss of employment, and can spiral into bigger issues, such as debt or losing a home.

When people move into crisis, it’s more difficult to meet their needs. This causes more distress and impacts other people in their lives too. In turn, this uses more public funds and places more pressure on services and the people who provide them.

We need organisations to work together, and to work with people with lived experience and members of the general public, to make sure they really do understand the needs and circumstances of the people and communities who use their services. By working together in a consistent way, we can design services that help deliver the right outcomes for people as efficiently and effectively as possible.