Designing thoughtful public services / Chelsea Mauldin / Episode #67

What is the secret to designing and delivering great public services?

In this episode Chelsea Mauldin shares her experience from running one of the leading service design agencies in the United States that focuses on the public sector: Public Policy Lab.

We talk about the challenges associated with scaling and implementation of services in a public context. And why you should never engage in a project that lacks people who will eventually be able to execute on the generated ideas.

Chelsea also shared some of her ideas on how you can get clients to take a more open approach rather than jumping straight to solutions. So the next time a client approaches you and asks for an App make sure to follow Chelsea's advice.

And finally we address a really big topic: how far can you as a designer go in making sure that your work isn't used to do harm? You might think that this is primarily something you need to think about when working for oppressing regimes. But this is actually much closer to home then you think!

According to Chelsea in every design project you need to be very aware of the power balance. And think about if your solution might be used to do harm to the people who are not in power.

To make this episode happen we got some help from the service design community as two topics where contributed by them. Thanks for that! And let's do it more often :)

If you enjoyed this episode don't forget to pass the link to someone who might benefit from this as well.

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EPISODE GUIDE
02:35 - The first encounter with Service Design.
05:30 - Why is thoughtful scaling and implementation difficult in a public sector context?
13:10 - How can we help policy makers keep an open mind rather than jumping to solutions?
22:00 - How far can a designer go guaranteeing an outcome which is a good outcome?
30:30 - Big Question: Where do we go from here?

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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Public Policy Lab ➜ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/_x69c
Chelsea on LinkedIn ➜ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/dzen_

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