The interesting times within NHS England continue.
For me the week had two main highlights, a Personalised Prevention Service senior leadership team (SLT) get together and a couple of Services Week sessions.
Senior leadership
Aside on job titles
My job title is lead service designer, I’m trying to be less weird about it.
I used to say I’m a ‘designer’. Not a ‘service’ or ‘interaction’ designer. On reflection, I think calling myself a ‘designer’ was a humble-brag. Suggesting I do all the design roles.
Being vague isn’t helpful. Helping people understand my role makes it easier for people to work with me.
In the past I’ve also avoided mentioning my ’level’ – not ’senior’ or ’lead’ – based on ideals about hierarchy. But as a straight, middle‑class white man, implicit structures favour me.
Well‑designed organisational structures provide accountability and support diversity.
Make things open, it makes them better
Anyway – I spent a day this week in an SLT meeting.
It was one of the best meetings I’ve had in a long time. It was a healthy. People being honest, vulnerable and kind. Giving and taking difficult feedback.
It is an absolute privilege to work in a culture like this.
The end result is some much needed structure, added accountability and better long‑term planning.
Thanks to everyone involved, especially Emily Houghton who held the space for us to be ourselves.
Services week
This week was Service Week – bringing the public sector together to share best practices and improve public services.
I contributed to two sessions but didn’t go to any others. Thankfully, recordings of the session are on YouTube
Stop mapping, start doing
Sarah Fisher and I ran a session on mapping. I used it to discuss some of my struggles as a service designer, hoping it would resonate with others.
I really enjoyed the session. The contribution from everyone was incredible, I’m grateful to everyone that took part.
Here’s my takeaways.
Maps are good for thinking, bad for communicating
Maps are most valuable for the people creating them rather than for those consuming them. The process of mapping helps teams organise and create shared understanding.
Maya D’Amour described the ‘generation effect’ – creators get the insights, but consumers struggle to extract information
Maps can be designed to be consumed by others, but those are rarely as valuable to the people who create them. As Annie Crabtree said “Are you mapping to learn or to communicate?”.
If you need to communicate what you have in a map, written summaries and slide decks are more effective.
Maps are disposable
No one revisits their maps. There are no ‘living documents’ – good to remember when starting mapping.
You don’t always need to go from left to right
Traditional service maps can be rigid. Showing the back‑and‑forth of real user journeys can makes maps unreadable.
Vero Jermolina described using London tube map visual language – an elegant way to show decisions and stages using familiar visual language.
Maps aren’t a way to validate what service designer do
This addresses my core anxiety. With less tangible output as a service designer, maps can seem like proof of work.
I need to be more comfortable with my non‑tangible contributions.
Vicky Houghton‑Price’s blog post ‘Do you need another map? Probably not’ describes this perfectly.
Digital Prevention Services – open show and tell
I contributed to Frankie Roberto‘s open show and tell on Digital Prevention Services. A quick run through of 5 related services.
Sessions that bring together multiple things are great. There’s only a loose connection, but the proximity helps give a context that single team demos can’t.
I’ve seen Frankie run this kind of session internally before and was very happy to take part. I also enjoy Frankie’s disdain for slides.
First Personalised Prevention Services design history post
The Personalised Prevention Platform team published an excellent summary of their discovery.