Top Tips: Focusing on users
1. Make having a user focus central to your mindset
Having a user focus is more about
your overall mindset than about
particular methods and tools.
Cultivate qualities such as
empathy, the ability to see
things from multiple
perspectives, and a genuine
appreciation of how citizens can
co-create and take ownership of
their own solutions.
2. Understand the importance of empathy
Building skills around empathy
with people (both inside and
outside the system) can help you
to put yourself in another
person’s shoes, to experience
what they do. Working in the
public sector, you are likely to
be very knowledgeable about your
areas of specialism, with clear
ideas of how systems should
work. Yet when you see the real
conditions on the ground, you
begin to understand which
conditions can make citizens
more or less likely to follow
these rules. It brings an
awareness of a whole range of
scenarios and an acceptance of
the complexity.
3. Unlearn the idea that you have the solution
It’s easy to get it wrong when
trying to guess what citizens
need. Using a design-led
approach and having empathy with
people can stop you from making
too many assumptions. For
example, using observational
techniques and understanding how
people engage with services and
systems can help identify unmet
and latent needs. Involving
users in the co-creation of new
solutions can also generate new
approaches and service
opportunities. Being a designer
is about stepping back, and handing
ownership and agency to
people to let them shape
their own environment.
4. Remember to think beyond the needs of your average user and consider the extremes
Designing for the ‘average’ user
doesn’t tell you about the
outliers. Seek out extreme users
and experts: people who have
interesting and different ways
of using the system because they
have specific needs. What are
these needs, and how can they
inspire us? Looking to extreme
users pushes us out of our
comfort zone, prompting us to
imagine wild ideas and concepts
that may also resonate with more
average users.
5. Reconnect to your mission to improve outcomes for citizens and society
Having a user focus can help you to reconnect with the original values that attracted you to the public sector: for many, this is a desire to improve outcomes for citizens and make a positive difference to society. Placing citizens at the heart of the design process can help you and your organisation to do that more effectively, while the direct and empathic connection to the end user can reignite your sense of purpose and motivate you.