My two cents

Why Service Design maturity matters

It's only when you know where you're good at and where you are less good that you know where you can put more energy into growing your Service Design practice.

Some lovely service designers working in councils in the UK have done some awesome work creating "The local government Service Design maturity model".

Big fancy name, but it's really good.

Origins

The model has been developed by a collaboration of council service designers facilitated by Newham Council. These councils are Barking & Dagenham, Cambridgeshire, Camden, Essex, Manchester and Newham.

The model is under a creative commons license. So you can really play with it, and even adapt it.

How it works

The model has six areas. For each area, you have three criteria.

And then, for each criterion, you say how good you are at it, on a scale from one to five, going from Planting to Thriving.

The model helps you to understand:

1. if your outcomes are focused on people.

2. If you use co-design.

3. How well do you use prototyping.

4. If your decisions are informed by evidence.

5. If you are aware of the complexity of the system.

6. And if the leadership endorses the Service Design practice.

Who can use it

This model was first designed for local government, but you can apply it in other contexts, too, especially if you practice Service Design in-house.

Going further

You can also check out another model that shows the different stages of the maturity of Service Design within an organisation.

More Service Design questions and answers like this one

Check out all the questions about Service Design in the government.