In this summary we explore the Community theme. It was identified alongside four other themes as part of the Practitioner Stories. You can read the quotes from this theme on our website.
We asked practitioners how they build collaborations with other people practicing in their area, and where they thought the Service Design community in Scotland should concentrate its efforts. Interviewees told us about the communities they participate in, and the communities they would like to have.
“Community” was used broadly and meant different things at different times for our interviewees. It could be the Scottish Service design community, but…
Practitioner Stories is turning 1 year old and in celebration of this we looked back on how everything had started, where we are now and how we feel about it.
A year ago
Practitioner stories started a year ago, with a twitter thread by Kirsty Joan Sinclair to which both Angela and Stéphanie replied:
Shortly after Serena got in touch and joined the team.
In a previous summary we looked at the way practitioners learn. A big part of it is by sharing. This happens within the practitioner’s professional network and during events.
In this summary, you will find:
- How practitioners network and keep in in touch
- How and what they share
- The reasons why some do not share
Interviewees told us:
- There is a a lack of space for honesty
- They want to be open, share resources and research
- Community should be a place to share
Networking — keeping in touch
Most practitioners attend various Meet ups, join Slack groups, mailing lists, keep in touch with previous colleagues and follow others on Twitter.
On Twitter, some observe…
This is the third article of our series summarising what we are learning from our research project . You can read the last one here.
Practitioners feel they primarily contribute by:
- fostering citizen/user participation and collaboration
- bringing in an empathic and evidence-based approach
- saving money through better services and practices
Interviewees emphasised three ways in which they make these contributions:
- bringing a service design perspective
- enabling collaborations
- engaging people creatively
We continue to synthesise our data and write up some of our insights. This is the second article of our series summarising what we are learning. You can read the first one here.
Contextualising the insights
These insights come from 15 remote interviews and one online workshop. You can learn more about the research project and approach on our website.
Our interview questions were very broad and we got a wide range of perspectives, but we do not know if these views are really representative of the community.
This is why we are now developing questionnaires to find convergences and divergences across the…
What is service design?
- Digital 9 Common Myths about Service Design — Scottish Government Digital Blog
- Service Design. Excuse me… what?. “ — by Mariel Macia
- Service Design. Translators across people, business and tech — by Mariel Macia
How does it compare with other roles?
- Comparing service design and business analysis — by Ben Holliday
- Service Design and UX Design: What’s the Difference? — by DesignLab
Want to become a Service Designer?
Here are some links that could help:
- Become a service designer in government: step by step — Design in government Blog
- How to create a portfolio to apply for a design role in government — Design in government Blog
- How can you support…
Since our last post in February, we have continued to synthesise our data and have started to write up some of our insights. This is the first in a series of articles summarising what we are learning.
Contextualising insights
These insights come from 15 remote interviews and one online workshop. You can learn more about the research project and approach in our website.
Although we speak of service design practice, we use the term service design very loosely.
- Only half of our interviewees self-identified as service designers or had Service Designer as their job title. …
In our previous blog, we told you about all the new ideas and feedback we received from the service design Scotland community.
There were a lot of suggestions on how we could provide better access to our raw research material, how we could communicate our insights and share it with the wider community. We started by creating a new website about our project.
An alternative to Miro
Miro is not for everyone and not very accessible. We used it because it helped us progress the analysis and structure the data in a visual way and to collaborate on it remotely.
However, it isn’t the…
Last week was busy and insightful! We ran our first workshop with the service design community and made our first participation to the Service Design Scotland Gathering as guests and co-creators.
Both events allowed us to get some feedback from the community. Thanks to this, we have lots of ideas and renewed energy to take the next steps.
Context
Last year we collected stories of service design from the public and third sectors in Scotland. We‘ve interviewed and discussed with 15 practitioners in Scotland how to better support, grow and build up the service design community in Scotland. …
What about starting the new year with a bulk of new insights and ideas about the service design practice in Scotland and its community?
After a long but insightful research phase, we are ready to share our analysis. We would like feedback from the Service Design community in the Scottish public and Third Sector and hope many will get involved in the sensemaking and ideation process.
In this post you will find
- What the project is about
- What we did since June 2020
- What our interview guide looked like
- The process we followed
- How you can take part
- Our previous updates
- Get in touch
What the project is about
