Blog: Service Design Champions course for Scottish Local Authorities

A new Service Design Champions course has been delivered to 25 councils through two training cohorts since May.

The course was developed by the Scottish Government’s Office of the Chief Designer and delivered in collaboration with the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government. Its aim is to upskill colleagues from local authorities in service design and participation. It introduces the basics of service design and shows the value of involving people who use public services in how they are designed.

Earlier this year, the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government and the Local Government Service Design Group worked with the Scottish Government to refresh the Scottish Approach to Service Design. The course is the result of this collaboration. The training reinforces the key principles and approach set out in the Scottish Approach to Service Design, which acts as a guide to improving participation in design of public services.

We delivered the training in May and June to two separate groups, consisting of 33 participants representing 25 different councils in total.

The online course runs over four half-day sessions and covers:

• what service design is and how it can help us deliver better services
• the design process
• how to use user research
• ethics in service design
• idea generation and prototyping

Participants also get the chance to try out the new skills and knowledge they have learned by designing and prototyping a fictional service design challenge across the four days.

Responsibility for delivering the course has now transferred to the Digital Office, which will continue to run the programme in partnership with the Local Government Service Design Group through a train-the-trainer model.

Anna Henderson, Service Design Lead, Office of the Chief Designer, “This training course will be a valuable tool for councils to support their use of the Scottish Approach to Service Design. Those who attended the recent sessions were very engaged and keen to increase their knowledge and skills around service design and participation. It’s great to see a consistent approach to this emerging across many of Scotland’s councils.”

Synnøve Frøiland, Service Designer, Digital Office for Scottish Local Government “Our collaboration with the Office of the Chief Designer has been invaluable. We’ve learned so much from their experience in delivering service design training and their expertise in the Scottish Approach to Service Design. Thanks to this partnership, we’ve been able to offer training aligned with the Scottish Approach to Service Design to the workforce in local government. We’re grateful to everyone who’s taken part so far and for the energy and engagement they’ve brought to the sessions.”

Feedback from the first two cohorts has been positive. Building on this success, the Digital Office is delivering two further courses in August and September in collaboration with service designers from the Local Government Service Design Group. Although these sessions are fully booked, we hope to run additional cohorts in the future. If you are interested in taking part, please get in touch at info@digitaloffice.scot.