Work wise, 2021 was a great year for Made Manifest - some quick highlights include:

• 💕10 consulting projects with 4 returning and 6 new client orgs

• 💰donated 1% of total revenue to environmental non profits

• 📝 9 editions of Ask a Service Designer newsletter 

If you’re curious, you can read the full year in review for more details, including the types of consulting projects we worked on. 

This edition’s question was inspired by a conversation I had with a mentee.

Q. Can you show me some examples of professional level service design insights or project reports?

Having tangible examples of work and reports to look at can be really helpful when you’re starting out - it gives you an idea of what to aim for and what ‘good’ looks like. One of the tricky things for service designers is that sharing our work is often a minefield, since our projects tend to be under NDA or contain sensitive information. 

In order to share some tangible examples of reports, I’ve collected some that are in the public domain and match / mirror what my experiences and expectations would be from a design consulting perspective. 

📋Towards a Veteran Centred VA - Piloting Tools of Human Centred Design for America’s Vets - Findings Report 

Project context from report: “In the spring of 2014, the VA Center for Innovation conducted a formal Human-Centered Design (HCD) pilot to test a qualitative research phase of a design process as potential tool for use at the VA. This exercise explored Veterans’ experience with the VA through the eyes of 40 Veterans across a range of demographics and locations.”

• A good example of level of depth and detail that would be expected for a professional level design research report. 

• Framing the supporting points to the key insights in the first person humanizes the finding and keeps the user voice at the forefront, e.g. “Information is confusing, inconsistent and often hard to find. I can’t figure out what I’m qualified for.”

• The report does a beautiful job of adding richness by including photos of research participants, service touchpoints and contexts of research.

📋Consultation Platform Discovery Report

From: Snook in partnership with the Democratic Society

Project context from report: “This report is the outcome of an eight-week discovery process. During this period of time, we have explored how GOV.UK and GDS could help improve consultations designed and run by central government and non-departmental public bodies.

We interviewed both creators of, and respondents to, online consultations to examine how they are using online consultations tools, and what their needs are. This was accompanied by online research, and conversations with experts in this field of work, helping us to look at what the current trends are in the use of digital channels to contribute to the policy making process.”

• A good example of providing not only detailed background and user needs, but also a landscape review looking at how other jurisdictions are approaching consultation.

• This report does a great job at providing very specific and granular recommendations that get into some concepts for the website. 

• These concepts are brought to life with illustrative wireframes, as well as user stories.

📋Fragments Website

From: ff.studio, Peopletoo in collaboration with Essex County Council

Project context from report: “FRAGMENTS was a research, design and exploration project led by ff.studio and Peopletoo, in collaboration with Essex County Council (ECC). It was funded by the DfE.

The goal was to create space to think outside organisational structures and think about more effective ways to deal with risks in the community. Academics call it contextual safeguarding. ECC calls it risk in the community. Most people would probably call it "keeping an eye out for things going wrong"."

• This website report is a great example of a more innovative, interactive format than a written report, slide deck, or PDF. Further details are available through another link in a more traditional written report.

• The site does a great job of storytelling through the use of illustrations, photographs, quotes, and the overall flow and design of the site.

• This report uses ‘what if’ framing and visual prototypes to bring the suggestions and recommendations to life. This framing becomes an interesting provocation, for example, ‘What if young people were employed by the council?'

➡️ The Best Reports Inspire Action

As you can see, these reports are all public sector examples (hence why they are more often in the public domain than private sector work). Insight, discovery and project reports can be used:

• As a documentation of the work completed (for posterity) 

• To build alignment and shared understanding for broader stakeholders who were not part of the process 

• As an artifact to support presentation and discussion of the work

As an aside, I find one difference between these reports and how Made Manifest approaches service design work is that there is often a set of multiple artifacts coming out from research or discovery. For example, this could include a report, journey map, service blueprint, perhaps an archetypes/persona doc, and these artifacts all layer into each other and need to make sense holistically. 

Regardless of the approach and structure of your service design deliverables and reports, what's most important is that they inspire action. Remember, ideas are great, but implementation, action and execution are even better!

If you have examples you've come across of great service design reports, I'd love to see them!

An Invitation

We’re working on a lunch and learn on ideation, inspired by our post on common mistakes - if you think your team might get value from this, we’d love to run this session with you! Get in touch by replying to this email.

Till next time,
Linn