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:
- Be easy to find
- Clearly explain its purpose
- Set the expectations a user has of it
- Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do
- Work in a way that is familiar
- Require no prior knowledge to use
- Be agnostic of organisational structures
- Require the minimum possible steps to complete
- Be consistent throughout
- Have no dead ends
- Be usable by everyone, equally
- Encourage the right behaviours from users and service providers
- Respond to change quickly
- Clearly explain why a decision has been made
- Make it easy to get human assistance