Spot the difference

service designers and outcomes focused practitioners and their role

in social innovation

September 14, 2012 1

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Innovation in social services• A decisive shift towards prevention• Greater integration of public services

at a local level driven by better partnership. Collaboration and effective local delivery

• Greater investment in the people who deliver services through enhanced workforce development, effective leadership

• A sharp focus on improving performance though innovation and use of digital technology(Christie, 2011)

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Innovation at IRISS

Whether innovation is radical or incremental is implies a real change in the way work is done, using new knowledge organisational forms, or processes to develop changes in the way we deliver support to people.

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An outcomes focused approach• Outcomes in a social care context

refers to the impacts or end results of support in a person life

• Aims to shift the balance of power for the professional to the service user (Boyle et al. 2010)

• Benefits of approach found for individuals staff and organisations (Miller 2011)

• Innovative because provision of support typically been led by available resources rather than outcomes people want to achieve

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A service design approach• Holistic, multidisciplinary and integrative

approach where designers with different expertise work with service stakeholder (Bartlett et al. 2008)

• Aims to make services more useful, usable, desirable for people and effective and efficient for organisation (Moritz 2005)

• Perceptions are challenged, change is stimulated through process and products which can change cultures (Burns et al. 2006)

• Innovative because collaborative process, integrating across boundaries

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In our paper

• 3 different themes• Many similarities and differences• This presentation, 3 differences– Incremental or radical social innovation– Focus on the person but who generates the idea?– Visualisation vs. conversation

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Difference

Incremental or radical social innovation

• Petts et al (2001) innovation and risk in social services

• Mager (2006) high levels of uncertainty are the hallmark of service design projects

• Process of iteration manages risk and supports a focus on outcomes at each stage of design

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Questions

Incremental or radical social innovation

• Do we need to be radical to be innovative?• How do can we support the social care sector

to embrace risk? • Can service design approaches effectively

manage risk?

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Difference

Focus on the person but who generates the idea?

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Questions

Focus on the person but who generates the idea?

• Is the use of service designers democracy with the designer facilitating?

• Is the designer first among equals, so ultimately as responsible for the outcome as the idea?

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Difference

Visualisation vs. conversation• Skills and tools

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Questions

Visualisation vs. conversation

• How sustainable is the inclusion of visual methods in service delivery and development?

• How do we measure meaningful interactions when including visual methods?

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More questions than answers?

• We think service design could be considered as a complimentary asset (Tether 2008), that is it enhances the value of an outcomes focused approach and is also enhanced by the use of the approach

• Both could contribute to innovation by involving service stakeholders in the design of services, leading to:– Increased personalisation of services– Wider and richer choices of ideas– Lower cost by eliminating processes that users do not

value/are inefficient

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Thoughts…

• What can learn from others who are working within public sector improvement field?

• What can we learn from others who are appraising different social innovation approaches?