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Good government services

In their new book "Good Services: How to design services that work," former UK Government Design Director Lou Downe offers the public sector an invaluable playbook to delivering government services that are in inclusive and intentional.

By GovFresh · May 26, 2020

In their new book "Good Services: How to design services that work," former UK Government Design Director Lou Downe offers the public sector an invaluable playbook to delivering government services that are in inclusive and intentional.

The foundation of Downe's book are 15 principles of good services:

  1. Be easy to find
  2. Clearly explain its purpose
  3. Set the expectations a user has of it
  4. Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do
  5. Work in a way that is familiar
  6. Require no prior knowledge to use
  7. Be agnostic of organisational structures
  8. Require the minimum possible steps to complete
  9. Be consistent throughout
  10. Have no dead ends
  11. Be usable by everyone, equally
  12. Encourage the right behaviours from users and service providers
  13. Respond to change quickly
  14. Clearly explain why a decision has been made
  15. Make it easy to get human assistance

Learn more.

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