Service Design in the Public Sector
Hsinyu Kuo
BBA, Feng Chia University,
2015
Supervisor: Eugenia Bertulis
EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY
OF ART + DESIGN, 2019
© Hsinyu Kuo, 2019

Service Design in the Public Sector
By
Hsinyu Kuo
BBA, Feng Chia University, 2015

Supervisor: Eugenia Bertulis

A CRITICAL AND PROCESS DOCUMENTATION PAPER SUBMITTED IN
PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF DESIGN

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN, 2019
© Hsinyu Kuo, 2019

Acknowledgements
Many people over the past two years have contributed their
time and knowledge to this project, for which I am sincerely
grateful.
I would like to first thank my family for their unconditional
love and support.
To my supervisor, Eugenia Bertulis for pushing me to cross
the boundary and all your well-round support when I was
in doubt. Your valuable guidance and insights helped me
become a better designer.
To my incredible internal reviewer and inspiring mentor,
Katherine Benjamin, for your numerous readings and
comments. Your unyielding enthusiasm and support
drove this project forward and was a constant source of
inspiration.
To all the people at Ontario Digital Service for creating
the best working environment. To Shannah Segal, Honey
Dacanay, Dana Patton, Jacqui Klugman and Lucia Hsieh
for wonderful conversations that helped to inform this
research. A special thank you to Xiaopu Fang, who was my
supervisor at rapid prototyping team, you took a leap of
faith in offering me an amazing co-op opportunity. All the
meaningful conversations with you help me have a greater
understanding of rapid prototyping and service design in
government.

To all the people who I worked with at Public Digital
Innovation Space in Taiwan for your cooperation and
valuable feedback. A special thank you to Audrey Tang
for sponsoring me to extend my internship and all the
thoughtful conversation. Thank you to Fangjui Chang, who
was my supervisor, for exploring and revising ideas together
to make positive impact on the Taiwanese government.
To my external reviewer, Dimeji Onafuwa, for your attention,
wisdom, and inspiring questions.
Of course, to my MDes 2019 cohort. Thank you for
contributing your ideas and expertise to my project and
helping to solve the challenges I encountered. Without you, I
couldn’t have had such a joyful and unforgettable journey in
pursuing my graduate studies.
And finally, a thank you to the design faculty at Emily Carr,
Helene Day Fraser, Keith Doyle, Christopher Hethrington,
Garnet Hertz, Gillian Russell, and Sarah Hay for kind
feedback and encouragement.

Table of Contents
1. Abstract

1

2. Introduction

4

2.1 Thesis Statement
2.2 Problem Space
2.3 Research methodologies and process
2.4 Research questions

3. Secondary Research

8

3.1 Service design
3.2 Agile development and prototyping in
the government
3.3 E m b e d d i n g s e r v i c e d e s i g n i n t h e
organizations

4. Case Studies: Differences between
private and public service design
4.1 Case study- Ontario Digital Service
(Canada)
4.2 Research outcomes with design practices
4.3 Conclusion of Chapter 4

19

5. Case Study: Building service design
culture in government

40

5.1 Case study- Public Digital Innovation
Space (Taiwan)
5.2 Research outcomes with design practices
5.3 Conclusion of Chapter 5

6. Case study: Design ethics in the
public sector

63

6.1 Case study- workshop exploring power
dynamics
6.2 Workshop outcome
6.3 The conclusion of Chapter 7

7. Conclusion

73

8. References

75

9. List of illustrations

81

1. Abstract
The digital transformations revolutionizing so many aspects
of contemporary culture are also dramatically changing
government services. Designers have an important role to
play in these shifts. A wide range of government services—
from applying for birth certifications to voting and paying
taxes; from immigration applications to citizenship and
permitting processes—are becoming available in digital
formats. This extension of government services from
traditional countertop services to digital access means that
governments are hiring designers to build these online
applications and platforms. This redesign of services, when
including human-centric research methods, enables citizens
to have a say in the government decision-making process
(Stewart, Dubow, Hofman & Stolk, 2016), and has resulted
in exciting design opportunities as well as significant
challenges. In this thesis, I elaborate on the practice of
service design in a government context, from micro and
macro perspectives, using three case studies.
IIn the first case study, I will give an example of how
governments are transitioning to redesign specific public
services using Agile principles. Agile describes how
prototyping and development teams experiment with
different possibilities in short “agile” periods of time, allowing
real end users to contribute their insights. Using rapid
prototyping methods such as Agile helps provide simple
and useful ways for citizens to find, use, and contribute to
the design of government services. This first case study

1

will describe agile practice in the rapid prototyping lab
at Ontario Digital Service (ODS), an organization under a
provincial government ministry.
In the second case study, I will describe how governments
practice service design from a broader perspective.
This example comes from my work with Public Digital
Innovation Space (PDIS), an organization under Taiwan
Open Government. PDIS contributes to facilitating
public collaboration with citizens and the government
under a mandate from the Taiwanese ministry called
1 Open Government: Every country
might have different definitions for
Open Government. In Canada, Open
Government is about making government
more accessible to everyone by offering
open data and digital records ("Open
G o v e r n m e n t " , 2 0 1 9 ) . Ta i w a n O p e n
Government is more about creating public
engagement to improve services, manage
public resources, drive innovation and
build safer communities ("Participation
Officer", 2018).

Open Government1. In this case study, the service design
organization is tasked with encouraging citizens and other
stakeholders to participate in the government decisionmaking process and social discussions.
In the context of my Master’s research, it was important
to investigate ethical issues in bringing neo-liberal rapid
prototyping methods to government service design (Kimbell
& Bailey, 2017). The final case study outlines a workshop I
held with fellow design students to investigate one ethical
issue in design; power dynamics within multidisciplinary
teams. I had realized that there was a lack of discussion
around design ethics in the public sector.

2

2. Introduction
2. 1 Thesis Statement
“Designers can bring about positive changes in how
governments provide services. Properly practiced
service design and rapid prototyping methods can
bring about positive social change.”

2. 2 Problem Space
Significant design opportunities and challenges are created
when extending government services to online offerings and
enabling citizens to have a say in the government decision
making process. The governments of UK, US, Australia, and
most recently Canada and Taiwan, among others, are leading
the way in designing public services. These shifts to online
public services can provide opportunities for the citizens
to co-produce and engage with public services to a deeper
degree.
Quick iterations of prototyping possible solutions in the
government provides opportunities for communicating
with a wider range of stakeholders, as well as providing fast
proofs of concept and increasing the public engagement
(Kimbell & Bailey, 2017, p.220). The Show and Tell2 activity
in the rapid prototyping process provides an opportunity
for research participants to observe progress during each
iteration. These Agile activities help governments implement

2 During Show and Tell, teams share
outcome and progress of development
with a wide range of participants. A
Show and Tell example: Service Week:
open Show & Tell, 8 teams from the
Government Digital Service sharing their
latest work.

transparency without a communications team filtering the
message. In the first case study I will discuss micro-level

3

service design solutions (working from a single touchpoint)
and the second case study will address macro-level service
design opportunities (across many open government
touchpoints.)
The article “Prototyping and the new spirit of policymaking” indicates that it is unclear how small-scale
prototyping truly benefits the large scale implementation
of policies and intersects with formal democratic structure
( Kimbell & Bailey, 2017, p.222). This study mentions that by
applying design thinking to public problems, prototyping
may engender more inequalities and uneven power relations
(Dombrowski, Harmon & Fox, 2016). In order to highlight
the consideration of ethics in design practice and to balance
power relationships in the government context, I explored
design ethics in my workshop by using language as a medium
to explore power dynamics.

2. 3 R e s e a r c h p r o c e s s
methodologies

and

While working on this thesis, I used a variety of design
research methodologies. Most prominently, the Agile
implementation of Rapid Prototyping in both my design
work for two governments, as well as in my studio projects.
Agile methodologies describe an approach which involves
“individual and interaction over processes and tools; working
software over comprehensive documentation; customer
collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to
4

change over following a plan” ("Manifesto for Agile Software
Development", 2001).
The methodologies of my primary research are case studies
within the governments of Ontario and Taiwan. Co-design
workshops with Emily Carr cohorts from the Master of
Design graduating classes of 2019 and 2020.
Another important methodology which heavily informed this
thesis are the expert interviews with professionals in private
and public sectors
Audrey Tang is the first digital minister in Taiwan Open
Government and Public Digital Innovation Space. She is
devoted to make government work more transparent.
Dana Patton is the service designer at Ontario Digital
Service, who helps ministries to create design strategies and
solutions.
Elynn Lorimer is the Chief Executive Officer at Spatial,
a research and design consultancy specializing in digital
innovation in Vancouver BC.
Fang-Jui Chang was a service designer at Public Digital
Innovation Space in Taiwan. She helped to establish
Participation Network and design collaboration toolkits for
Taiwanese civil servants.
Gord Tulloch is the director of innovation at PosAbilities, a
non-profit organization that provides social services.

5

Gordon Ross is the co-founder and vice president at
OpenRoad, a design consultancy that helps organizations
create and deliver digital services in Vancouver BC.
Jacqui Klugman was senior User Experience designer at
Ontario Digital Service and is the current design leader at
TWG, a software company based in Toronto.
Katherine Benjamin is the current vice president at Ayogo, a
health service company, and former labs leader at ODS.
Ko-Hsun Huang is a senior service designer at Telia
Company, a telco company in Sweden.
Lucia Hsieh is senior user researcher and the leader of the
user research lab at Ontario Digital Service.
Rob Hickling is the Vice President of Aavri, a digital services
design and build company working with clients within the
financial services industry.
Paul Cubbon is a senior branding manager and now
an instructor in the marketing and entrepreneurship
accelerator program at UBC.
Shannah Segal is the manager of the User Experience
Chapter at Ontario Digital Service.
Xiaopu Fang is the leader of the rapid prototyping lab at
Ontario Digital Service.

6

2. 4 Research Prompts
I came up with seven research prompts which are formed by
my practices at the governments of Ontario and Taiwan.

2.4.1 What are the differences between service
design as practiced in private and public
sectors?
2.4.2 How can service designer bring different
thinking and valuable knowledge from
private sector to public service design?
2.4.3 What are some of the best public service
design processes in governments?
2.4.4 What are some of the informative
differences between Ontario Digital
Service and Public Digital Innovation
Space in Taiwan?
2.4.5 How can service designer build the
service design culture properly in the
government where the design culture is
not mature and obvious?
2.4.6 What can a service designer learn from
design in the public sector?
2.4.7 What has to change when methods
from private sector are brought into
government?

7

3. Secondary Research
3. 1 Service design
Service design is the art of coordinating services (Ruiz, 2014).
There are three features of service design. The first is user
centric. We need to stand in users’ shoes to fully understand
their needs, behaviors and preferences. Secondly, service
design is co-creative. All levels of stakeholders need to
participate in the design process, in order to understand end
users, uncover opportunities and provide solutions. Thirdly,
it is holistic; we sew all touchpoints together not only
focusing on the user experience of the front stage but also
the workability of the back stage (Fonteijn, 2017). Combining
these three features together in private sector design, we
can create a service that users love, with repeat business
and positive word-of-mouth (Morales, 2017).
In the public sector user centric, co-creative, and holistic
design practices also can build services that users love, or at
least are less frustrated by. Digital governments services can
be designed to be more widely accessible, more responsive,
less bureaucratic, more elegantly and appropriately
designed, as well as replacing high-cost and time-intensive
services. Digital transformation only works well if it is
thoroughly well designed and tested across the front and
back stages. That is, governments must consider an entire
chain of activities to streamline; the public facing end and
the back-end process with labor-intensive activity (K.
Benjamin, Personal Communication, Feb. 18, 2019; McKinsey
Center for Government, 2016).

8

3.1.1 Private sector service design
One exemplar for private sector design is TELUS’s
redesign of the service for renewing mobile
contracts ("Service Design Network, Bridgeable:
Redefining the TELUS Renewals Experience",
2018). TELUS’s Service Design team cooperated
with Bridgeable, a service design consultancy, and
began user research with the customers to identify
current user journeys and real problems. They
found out that customers typically access contract
renewal services across different channels, starting
from web searches and often finishing the renewal
in person in a store, or starting from the call center
and ending up on the web. The other key insight is
that if customers didn’t get the same deals across
channels then they would feel that they were not
getting the best possible price and would call in to
bargain, which increased the cost of service on the
back stage.
TELUS then brought in a cross-section of managers
to identify the problem, and with the same
background knowledge these managers guided
the implementation of new solutions together.
TELUS and Bridgeable kept holding series of
research from the perspectives of the front and
back stages, including customers and TELUS
frontline staff, to have a better understanding of

9

all behavioral elements. In order to consolidate
stakeholder research, they built the journey map
and categorized two types of users based on their
behaviors: the “Proactive Warrior” who researches
by multiple channels and negotiates the price, and
the “ Passive Optimist” who tends to use single
channels and hope for the best offer (Fig. 1).
After comprehensive user research, the TELUS
partnership moved on to co-create and iterate
possible solutions with customers and a wide
variety of staff from multiple channels. This project
ended up focusing on designing solutions for five
touchpoints: in-store, phone call, website, email
offer, and unboxing the new phone. The first day of

Figure 1 has been removed due to copyright restrictions. The information
removed is a diagram adapted from Bridgeable, 2018

Fig. 1 TELUS user journey map -Shows two types of target audiences’
journey (Illustatrion credit Bridgeable,
2018).

10

co-creation, participant built the initial concepts
and features that would address the problems. The
second day, they used the low-fidelity prototype,
which Bridgeable staff built based on the first day
co-creation, to gather user feedback and then
made iterations. At the end of the co-creation,
participants presented their prototypes to TELUS’s
top executives.
The key finding is that people did not trust that
they were getting the best offer on the website;
in contract, they felt they could negotiate a better
deal with a real person on the phone or in store. In
the solutions, using AI generates personalized deals
with high, medium and low cost options based
on customers’ previous bills so that all channels’
offer stay in consistency. There are different new
features for each channel: for phone calls channel,
they incorporated a SMS service which sends
out a message to arrange a specific time to talk
with the customer; for the website, they added
a personalized chat assistant with the option for
an online call; and the last touchpoint of finishing
renewing a contract was a special unboxing
experience to guide users through the process of
activating a new phone.
From this case study, TELUS not only experienced

11

well-defined user research but also rapidly
prototyped the solutions with stakeholders before
officially publishing the solutions. The most
crucial thing is that the solutions present across
different channels by creating physical and digital
touchpoints. This project has been implemented
in the market and the outcomes are measured
by customer satisfaction scores. Measurability
is a difficult characteristic which I have not
encountered in the governments of Ontario and
Taiwan, but which inspires me as to what other
possible procedures of practicing service design
can be brought into the government.

3.1.2 Civic service design
In the book Service Design: From Insight to
Inspiration (2013), Polaine, Løvlie, and Reason
discuss some differences between public and
private sector service design. Instead of having
customers, users, or consumers like commercial
services have, in the public sector we simply have
users. As a result, in the public sector, innovation
and success cannot be measured by profit but
rather by the value it brings to society. These values
are difficult to quantify. Moreover, policy goals
cannot be easily aligned with the specific users and
this becomes the major challenge for service design
in the public service. Therefore, service designers

12

not only need to understand the public but also the
relationships within different ministries to uncover
the disconnects between government policies and
citizens’ and residents’ needs.
This book emphasizes that “Service designers are
not public service natives compared with the policy
makers, social scientists, and economists who
dominate public debate” (p.177). In other words,
designers in government must spend a lot of time
understanding government culture. At the same
time, service design is being used in rethinking
and redesigning public services to improve society,
and changing government culture to understand
iterative design methods. The role service designers
play in the public context is to offer a set of
methods and approaches to encourage a wider
range stakeholders to bridge the gap between
disparate parts of systems. For example, the service
blueprint (illustration coming) is the artifact that
helps to coordinate service components across
different parts of systems, including multiple
ministries at the back stage and diverse users at the
front stage. Finally, service designers can be positive
disruptors; breaking historical government work
in silos. While practicing within the governments
of Ontario and Taiwan, I noticed these concepts
cannot be fully and seamlessly implemented if the

13

service design cognition is not mature enough in
the government. It takes time and patience to grow
a flourishing service design culture in government
context. My practice at ODS inspires me that rapid
prototyping is an crucial approach to show the
value of service design because user research and
testing are important parts of service design to
uncover users’ needs and receive feedbacks.

3. 2 Agile development and prototyping
in the government
My experience at ODS lets me realize that quick iterations
of primary user research and rapid prototyping are crucial
approaches to demonstrate the value of service design,
and in this section I outline several key texts describing
issues with quick iterative work in government. In general,
the secondary research agrees that user research and
testing uncover users’ needs and generates rich feedback.
3 Waterfall development process
i n v o l v e s f i v e p h a s e s : re q u i re m e n t ,
design, implementation, verification
and maintenance, which need to be
completed sequentially in order to
develop a software solution. Waterfall was
developed for materially intensive design
development such as automotive design,
where iterative cycles are materially
expensive. These waterfall processes
are often contrasted with software
development models such as Agile, as
waterfall tends to be linear.

Governments often outsource digital service delivery. While
outsourcing can manage risk, it also reduces the digital
skills and capacities of civil servants. According to “Agile
innovation management in government” most contract
managers working with outsourcing agencies follow the
traditional waterfall development3 process. Waterfall is
highly opaque and lacks flexibility and communication with
end-users during the development process (Mergel, 2016).

14

These older product development processes provide an
outcome which merely fulfills the contract requirements.
These norms lead to increased delays or even failed delivery
of digital service (Anthopoulos, Reddick, Giannakidou &
Mavridis, 2016). To address these issues, Agile development
methods, including Scrum, Lean Development, Extreme
Programming (XP) and rapid prototyping4 , have been
introduced into the public sector to enable shorter
development phases and radical collaboration with end
users. In the Ontario Digital Service, rapid prototyping,
inspired by the Lean Startup, is recognized as a valuable
working process for the government because although

4 Agile development methods: These are
the development processes which follow
“iterative and incremental object-oriented
development cycles” (Schwaber, 1995).
Unlike waterfall development process,
products or services developed with these
processes will experience user testing
and development iteration several times
before launching for mass production or
market.

government teams may know something is not working in
their existing service, they might not know what to do about
it, and specifically, how digital tools can be used to address
the problem. In situations like this, rapid prototyping can
experiment with different possibilities in a short period of
time and help ministries get unstuck (Ontario Digital Service,
2018).
Solutions are ever-changing in an agile system. This
changeability means the outcomes are less predictable,
which brings about several challenges for implementing
agile development process in governments. In the public
sector, the governance and spend controls are waterfalllike in nature: the condition for getting funding to pay for a
program is to say upfront exactly how you are going to spend
money, so with this limitation, only small projects can adopt
agile ways of working5 . Kimbell and Bailey (2017) highlight

15

that prototyping might not be the best way to balance
transparency because government cannot give out money
for things that are not clearly defined up front. They also
outline that it is unclear how small-scale prototyping truly
benefits the production of mass policies and intersects with
formal democratic structure. Furthermore, Mergel (2016)
5 In order to overcome the waterfall

financial gatekeeping process, Ontario
Digital Service is responsible for
assessing potential service providers
in the government before they move
to next development stage. In this way
governments can ensure that service
delivery follows Digital Service Standards
and providers work in an agile way.
For the government vender, ODS is
piloting projects to release funding
based on development iterations (K.
Benjamin, Personal Communication,
February 18, 2019; H. Dacanay, Personal
Communication, March 18, 2019).

states that because agile methods bring potential behavioral
changes in the civil servant employees delivering the
services. Because these deep systemic changes can require
long-term training, agile development faces challenges to be
fully implemented in government. Mergel notes that a multilayered approach is needed. The varied issues brought up by
the secondary research on Agile and other Rapid Prototyping
processes outline both the importance and the complexity
of Rapid Prototyping in Government Service.

3. 3 Embed service design in organizations
Outstanding service design projects need to not only
create profit or reduce costs but also to inspire culture and
behavior changes in the organization, whether in private
sector or government contexts. The “Baby” project, designed
by the agency Hellon for the Musgrave supermarket chain,
improves the shopping experience for parents with babies
at the biggest grocery store in Ireland. This project won
the award for best international service design work at the
Service Design Global Conference 2018, and shows three
crucial achievements of practicing service design: reducing

16

parents’ stress in 50 stores, creating approximately EUR 5
million incremental effect on annual revenue and shifting
Musgrave towards a customer-centric and cross-functional
team organization ("Service Design Network, Hellon: "Baby"Reducing Stress and Increasing Parent Spend Through
Design", 2018).
Through researching case studies like “Baby” and others, I
identified the similar challenge of embedding service design
into both government and large commercial organizations-that is, senior management remains unconvinced of the
benefits and results of service design and has a lack of tools
and approaches to manage service design projects (Sheppard,
Sarrazin, Kouyoumjian & Dore, 2018). In order to overcome
the barrier, Siobhan Hennessy (2019), the Head of Customer
Experience at Musgrave, mentions that building service
design culture takes time and consistent hard work. She
provides the seven golden tips of embedding service design
in the organization ("Committing your organization to a
strategic use of service design", 2019).
The first is to find the key ambassadors for your internal
support team championing service design methods. The
second is to start on small scale. The third is to build a
multidisciplinary team including the senior managers. The
fourth is to share measurable and tangible results. The
other tips are using storytelling from users’ perspectives
to establish the emotional connection; building strong
relationships within the internal staff and outside of the

17

service design partner; and finally, seeking international
recognition for the accomplishments to convince senior
managers that service design is a worthwhile investment for
the organization (2019).
These tips are similar to the approaches I will describe
in my case studies at ODS and Taiwan below. Combining
Hennessy’s seven tips with my findings will propose a better
approach for embedding service design in government.

18

In the chapter 4 and 5, I will use two case studies at Ontario Digital Service and Public
Digital Innovation Space to elaborate my practices and findings.

4. Case study: Differences between
the private and public service design
In this first case study, my main research inquiry has
been to unearth differences between private and public
sectors service design. I had the privilege of working as an
interaction design co-op during the summer of 2018 doing
research at the rapid prototyping lab within Ontario Digital
Service (ODS). My assignment was redesigning the interface
of digital services and conducting user testing. I came up
with multiple design possibilities in a short period of time
and was able to react to users’ feedback and make quick
iterative changes. This experience allowed me to gain deep
practical understanding of agile interaction design in service
design process.

4. 1 Case study- Ontario Digital Service
4.1.1 Background
Ontario government, a provincial government in
Canada, established an independent organizational
unit, Ontario Digital Service (ODS), to address the
trend of digital transformation. ODS built two labs:
first, a user research lab which helps civil servants
to understand citizens’ needs by conducting user
research; the other is the rapid prototyping lab
which practices agile methodologies to improve
digital service in a short period of time in order to

19

keep the government moving forward efficiently.
In order to illustrate the prototyping team’s
iterative schedule; I made the following diagram
(Fig. 2). Every week is a sprint. Monday we do sprint
planning and co-creation. Tuesday and Wednesday
designers build or revise prototypes and developers
work on programmed prototype. Thursday is our
big day, we do user testing and consolidate findings.
Friday we have a celebration ceremony called
"Show and Tell". In the Show and Tell, every ODSer
can join in with feedback for the week and give the
prototyping team critiques and helps.

Fig. 2
Rapid prototyping schedule
at ODS

20

4. 2 Research outcomes with design practices
While at ODS, I worked on four projects with the rapid
prototyping team: the first is digitalizing digital service standard
self-assessment guide; the second is filming prototyping lab
introduction video; the third is redesigning the public service
which makes finding second career in Ontario more efficiently;
the fourth is designing sub-navigation system for Ontario.ca. In
this section I will use these projects to revisit and illuminate my
research questions.

4.2.1 First Research Question: What are the
differences between service design as
practiced in private and public sectors?
• Answer: The "writ drop" period
My first month at ODS was during the “writ
drop” period. The writ drop period is the time
immediately before and after a provincewide election. During this period government
employees are not allowed to do public facing
engagement, including user research. This is
to make sure government employees do not
inadvertently sway public opinion in ways that
may influence voting behaviour. For this reason,
during summer 2018, we were limited to focusing
on the internal services which are used by the
public servants in Ontario Public Service and
Ontario Digital Service. By focusing on internal

21

to government projects, we could carry on
doing some user research as long as we focused
exclusively on people who worked within the
government.
Our team was assigned the project of digitizing
6 DSS: Ontario Digital Service set up 14
points of Digital Service Standards (DSS)
to help anyone build and deliver good
online information and transactional
services. All leading digital governments
have their own digital service standards,
the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada.

Project Problem Statement

“Project leads don’t
have an intuitive
way to carry
out their own
assessment of their
compliance with
the digital service
standard.”

the Digital Service Standard (DSS6) selfassessment form and our primary users are public
servants. The purpose of having these standard
is to ensure that ministries and venders deliver
or build a proper service for the public, and more
specifically, follow a methodical step-wise process
with clear gatekeeping milestones in which quality
can be audited as a condition of signoff to proceed
into future stages of project development. In order
to implement these digital service standards, the
ODS set up an assessment team to evaluate new
services in each design phase such as discovery,
alpha, beta and live. The problem statement was
that “Project leads don’t have an intuitive way to
carry out their own assessment of their compliance
with the digital service standard”. This project
experienced four one-week sprints (Fig. 3).

22

Fig. 3
Digital DSS self-assessment iteration
overview -This project involved paper, digital
and programmed prototypes. The key
takeaways we found are giving users
options such as saving answers which
allows the user to log back in and
edit answers again, and requesting
a personal copy of the form for their
record.

Most current prototype video
23

One of our major findings was that no matter how
easy the interface is to navigate, if the content
is overwhelming, users won’t want to use. We
realized that creating a digital self-assessment
7 According to Katherine Benjamin, the
labs leader at ODS, leadership is facing
an ongoing challenge to show the value
of rapid prototyping. Therefore, even
though the artifact has limited value,
she still asked the prototyping team to
prototype everything as an artifact to
prove the benefits of rapid prototyping
(K. Benjamin, Personal Communication,
February 18, 2019).

guide might not be the best solution7. Our two
recommendations were as follows (Fig. 4): 1. Only
provide a self-assessment guide for particular
phases; and 2. Create an assessment appointment
booking service.

Fig. 4
New DSS self-assessment process
The heavy content prevents people
from finishing the assessment, so we
offer an alternative with less than ten
questions to help potential service
providers communicate the scope of
their projects with the assessment
team at ODS. The DSS self-assessment
form becomes the guideline to help
people understand the questions they
should keep asking when project moves
on.(Illustration credit: author, 2018).

• Answer: The bureaucratically political
hierarchy
My second practice was an introduction video for
the prototyping lab to celebrate and promote
the work the lab was doing for new internal
audiences. The election was over and the
Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, led
by Doug Ford, had won. Due to the Liberal Party
24

First Research Question:

What are the differences between service
design as practiced in private and public
sectors?
having been in power in Ontario from 2003 to
2018, the new party in power would have their
own focus of problem areas and trigger a range of
small and large changes across the public sector.
The lack of clarity on the strategic direction of
the new government meant ODS kept staying
tuned to know the future direction of their key
decisions, while in the meantime not doing any
public-facing service design.

Project Problem Statement

“Lab leader needs
tools to show the
value of rapid
prototyping team
to the upcoming
government”

On the other hand, ODS needed to demonstrate
our value proposition and how differently we
work, compared with other ministries, to the
upcoming government. Thus, aside from creating
a presentation to convey information, we chose to
use a dynamic method, filming a video8, to show
how we practice rapid prototyping in Kitchener.
(Fig.5)

8 Katherine Benjamin mentions that there
were two strategic values in filming
video. As well as helping to showcase
to the new government that the rapid
prototyping lab is able to perform work
quickly and at no cost, video prototyping
is a helpful tool for rapid prototyping ,
and this project allowed the members at
the rapid prototyping team to learn about
this new method (K. Benjamin, Personal
Communication, February 18, 2019).

Fig. 5 Introduction video clips -We did crazy 8 practice to select the
theme of the video and then mapped
out the storyboard together. One of
the important clip is to show we test
with different stakeholder including the
Digital Chief Officer, Hillary Hartley.

25

First Research Question:

What are the differences between service
design as practiced in private and public
sectors?
• More about efficiency and cost saving
(but also trust)
Project Problem Statement

In the private sector, service improvement helps

“No simple
wayfinding around
Ontario.ca.”

a brand to be more competitive, increase market
share, brand awareness and grow the market. In
the government, trust, efficiency and cost saving
for both the public and government workers are
the main current goals. The final project I worked
on at ODS was designing the sub navigation for
Ontario.ca, which is an official website for the
Ontario government. The main site provides
government information and access to services
such as healthcare and drivers licenses. In the
public sector, consistency is key for building the
public’s trust and for efficiency, as the example
of “911” demonstrates. In Canada, nobody needs
to train people to call 911 for an emergency
because it is a consistent public service. Currently
wayfinding and navigation is an issue on the
Ontario.ca website. Different ministries spend
time creating their own versions of navigation
tools so the public needs to learn new ways of
navigating when they browse different pages.
After spending 4 weeks experimenting with
various types of sub-navigation, we realized there
were three types of subsites or pages on Ontario.
ca (Fig. 6). First were content-heavy pages, second

26

were application pages and last were transaction
pages. Based on these different types of pages,
we provided the most suitable navigation for
them(Fig. 7) and created a consistent navigation
system.

Fig. 6
Sub-navigation system
design iteration overview
The first two weeks, we focused on
the main navigation menu. After user
testing, we found that users google
what they want and generally do not
use the main navigation menu, so we
axed both ideas and went with a more
streamlined menu approach with “in
this section” components. In week 3 we
tested on the ideal of “in this section”
components which is also not ideal for
navigation because it confused users
about the table of contents.

27

Fig. 7
Sub-navigation final design outcome -We proposed to offer different subnavigations based on the types of
subsites or pages on Ontario.ca.

4.2.2 Second Research Question: How can
service designer bring different thinking
and valuable knowledge from private
sector to public service design?

Project Problem Statement

“Employment
Ontario Client
Support Officers
need a better
tool to help
Ontarians find the
second career.”

• Answer: use pictures as well as words (as
well as other experiential media)
In July of 2018, the writ drop period ended and we
were able to conduct user testing with the public,
so we moved on to project, Finding Employment
and Training Services (FEATS). FEATS is the
search tool that the call center agents at
Employment Ontario use to help unemployed or
underemployed Ontarians find happier career
options and training (Fig. 8 & 9). We prototyped
iterations of the FEATS search tool in six sprints

28

Fig. 8
FEATS design iteration overview
We mainly focused on redesigning
the filter layout and presentation of
information to help agents and public
users to browse through program
information more efficiently.

Most current prototype video

29

The need for a better search tool was uncovered
through user research and testing with client
support officers. Additionally, management at
Employment Ontario requested that the new
version of FEATS be available to the public users
for self-support as well as the client support
officers. In order to extend the audience of
the FEATS too, we included test and prototype
iterations with Ontarians from the general public.

Fig. 9
FEATS agents’ current user journey -The current presentation of information
prevents agents from copying and
pasting information into Livechat
immediately. Agents mentioned the
demographic filters do not work well
and they would like to have filters to
make their screening process more
efficient (Illustration credit: author,
2018).

In the last week of the project, I used service
design methods and handed off a visual
presentation in order to give the future
development team a clear picture about
components and future considerations of design
opportunities for FEATS (Fig. 10).
The final insight regarding bringing private sector
service design methods to public work that

30

the FEATS project provided was using Journey
Mapping. By making journey maps for the FEATS
search tool, (Fig. 11 & 12) , I identified the potential
opportunities beyond our project scope for
making FEATS more useful and to truly reduce the
unemployment rate. For example, we observed
that after being given a program’s information,
there are a lot of unknowns around the
improvement of skill sets, the quality of programs,

Fig. 10
FEATS service blueprint -This is created based on the most
current prototype and shows future
service providers how to manage or
implement FEATS. In order to make
FEATS more accessible for citizens,
EO needs to create different channels
to raise the awareness of FEATS.
From the ODS end, we have to build
a better database shell for FEATS to
pull data from. Due to inclusivity and
convenience, ODS needs to request
211 to add new demographic filters
as needed, such as a former convict
tag and to start collecting website
information specifically linked to each
service.

and the outcome of having a second career.
One suggestion was that Employment Ontario
client support officers could act as caseworkers,
making them be able to help unemployed people
find training programs and regularly track
the outcome. When people finish the training
program, they can contact their officers to help
them find a job. This provides continuity in the
service experience. The other suggestion was to
provide a set of questions to officers to ensure
31

the same level of quality is provided to all clients
and to gather as much relevant information about
clients’ needs as possible.

Fig. 11
FEATS agents journey map-Through 8 user research interviews with
agents, our team mapped out their two
main frustrations in the journey map
and redesigned the the filter layout
and presentation of information to help
agents copy and paste information
immediately. Developers tried to fix the
data retrieved by the filters.

Fig. 12
F E AT S h y p o t h e t i c a l o f t h e
public’s journey map -We didn’t interview with real endusers who have the experience of using
FEATS so this journey map is mapped
out by agents’ feedback. By practicing
this, we identified the part of the users’
journey that FEATS didn’t cover and
used this as a material to tell future
service providers that they need to do
further research with the public.

32

Second Research Question:

How can service designer bring different thinking and
valuable knowledge from private sector to public service
design?
• Answer: Intermesh your rapid
prototyping process with service design
tools.
Rapid prototyping helps designers to move from
abstract concepts toward creating tangible
prototypes to gather profound feedback from
end-users. However, practicing rapid prototyping
without fully understanding service components
will cause confusion among team members.
Service design can help to improve the both the
quality and the efficiency of the ways we work.
Therefore, I wondered what is the possibility and
potential process of adding service design into
the rapid prototyping process. My proposal is to
conduct service blueprints with team members at
the beginning of the project to clarify the current
process and flaws of service (Fig. 13).
Typically, generative user research and evaluative
user testing are carried out in separate activities.
In our iterative prototyping cycles, we embedded
user research into the user testing activity to
create organic co-design opportunities. We
didn’t have a user journey map before creating
prototypes, and made user journey maps in the
middle sprints. Iterating user journey maps as
needed helped to identify potential opportunities
during iteration sections. Making service
blueprints were also helpful because future
33

Fig. 13
Service design in the
rapid prototyping process
By practicing back and forth between
tangible solutions and abstract service
design methodologies, we can keep
project progressing with tangible
outcome and have the chance to
take a step back to consider service
components simultaneously (Illustration
credit: author, 2018).

service providers can have a clear picture of how
to manage or implement a service. Practicing
service design methods and rapid prototyping
back and forth not only allows designers to keep
moving forward with tangible designs but also
offers the opportunity to slow down the process
of rapid prototyping and think about other
possibilities in a broader picture.

4.2.3 Third Research Question: What are
some of the best public service design
processes in governments?
I identified two ways of doing public service design,
depending on the goal of the organization. One is
from micro perspective to macro which is fixing
and fitting small pieces of services into a broader
picture to create a better user experience in the
government, such as ODS. The other one is from
macro to micro. That is, governments start with

34

practicing service design from the overall picture
so that participating teams can identify which
ministries need to involve to solve social problems,
for example PDIS.

• Answer: From micro to macro
perspective (Fig. 14)
Implementing service design in an agile
development process from micro perspective
may limit and create potential challenges. When
focused on the micro (single touchpoint), the
design team might fail to consider the broader
picture of the service.
The team may jump into creating solutions so fast
they don’t have time to evaluate and understand
the assumptions behind the request for a specific
digital service. In response, my proposal for ODS is
to rapidly prototype a digital service as a starting
point and then consider other touchpoints at the
same level during each iteration. For instance,
while redesigning FEATS, prototyping teams also
can consider how to connect FEATS with job
profile services, job banks and physical service
centres.
By moving from the micro to the macro, ODS
designers can sew other services from the same
ministry together, as well as consider touchpoints

35

Third Research Question:

What are some of the best public service design
processes in governments?

Fig. 14
From micro to
macro perspective

at the upper level or different stages. When rapid

From micro to macro perspective -Practicing service design from single
digital service to cross-ministries
services. That is, rapidly prototype a
digital service as a starting point and
then consider other touchpoints at
the same level during each iteration
(Illustration credit: author, 2018).

design thinking to improving public services, the

prototyping becomes embedded with service
entire community will benefit.

36

Third Research Question:

What are some of the best public service design
processes in governments?

• From macro to micro perspective (Fig.
15)
The second best process of public service design
starts from the macro picture. The design team
are invited to take a step back to think about what
the real social problems that FEATS needs to solve.
One answer is reducing the unemployment rate.
Dealing with the unemployment rate, we need

Fig. 15
From macro to micro
perspective -The practice starts from considering
all the touchpoints at first. Then,
start designing each touchpoint by
using different types of prototyping
methods, such as video, paper or digital
prototype. This way, as designers,
we can divide our effort and time to
prototype different touchpoints to
ensure that the government is moving
forward (Illustration credit: author,
2018).

to follow through different services, ministries
and stages. By implementing user journey
maps and service blueprints in the early design
process, we can consider more possibilities and
have a comprehensive understanding of service
components at the beginning but also divide our
effort and time to prototype different touchpoints
to ensure that the government is moving forward.

37

4. 3 Conclusion of Chapter 4
9 Personal interviews with Shannah Segal,
Xiaopu Fang and Dana Patton at ODS (July
to August, 2018).

According to expert interviews with senior ODSers9, service
design doesn't play a significant role in the ODS, since it
is too new to be understood by ministries and tenured
public servants, and too broad to fit under one program’s
portfolio. Therefore, in ODS we seldom mention that we are
practicing “service design” but just say we are doing user
research and user testing. Doing user research and testing
openly in multi-disciplinary teams with colleagues and
upper management brings rich user insights to the design
team, as discussed above. Furthermore, research and test
sessions are also performative demonstrations which allow
non-designers to participate and experience outcomes

10 U s e r r e s e a r c h d i d n ’ t e x i s t i n t h e
Government of Ontario until user research
and prototyping labs started practicing it.
Now, user research has become a thing
that everyone wants in the Government
of Ontario. Therefore, we found that
people need performativity and visibility
to understand new things (K. Benjamin,
Personal Communication, February 21,
2019).

and changes in a short period of time10 . User research and
testing are important parts of service design practice which
uncover users’ needs and insights, so they can be the means
to show the value of service design and be the foundation of
bringing service design into governments.
At the ODS rapid prototyping team, we started from
creating rough solutions and then conducted user research
and testing simultaneously. In comparison, the TELUS
project mentioned in the previous chapter involved
comprehensive user research before prototyping solutions,
and the solutions included physical and digital touchpoints.
Moreover, our team mainly focused on creating a specific
digital service and didn’t consider other touchpoints. Due to
the tendency of governments to move slowly, and because

38

it is hard to measure the outcome, rapid prototyping can
inspire a different way of working in the government and
bring obvious outcomes from a wider range of stakeholders
in the process of making public service.

39

5. Case study: Building service
design culture in the
government
My second case study is from projects in the Public Digital
Innovation Space (PDIS) within Taiwan Open Government. I
worked remotely from Canada as a service and interaction
designer from October 2018 to Febuary 2019. My primary
responsibilities were designing toolkits for civil servants
to enable them to use service design thinking and
methodologies to facilitate social discussions.

5. 1 Case study- Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)
5.1.1 Background
Taiwan didn’t always have an open government and
PDIS. A major event caused the Taiwan government
to move toward a more open government system.
The Sunflower Movement happened in 2014, when
a member of the Legislative Yuan (legislative body)
took only 30 seconds to announce the passage of an
agreement allowing for freer trade in services with
China. Taiwanese citizens realized that the pact
was negotiated in secret and would allow China
to gain greater political control over the island.
The day after, a million people participated in a
demonstration. Four-hundred student protesters
occupied the debating chamber of the Legislative
Yuan for twenty-three days to ask for a law allowing

40

for greater public oversight. During the occupation,
every corner of the parliament was filmed and
projected immediately in the street as if the walls
of parliament were transparent. The occupation
was peaceful but students caused a lot of damage
at parliament. The repair cost was $2985,000 New
Taiwanese Dollars ($130,000 CAD) and was covered
by citizen donations.
In response to the Sunflower Movement, the public
initiated grassroots campaigns and more and
more people contributed to the “g0v” (gov-zero),
a decentralized civic tech community devoted
to holding hackathons around social issues and
using technology to empower citizens to shape
the civil society and make the government more
transparent ( “g0v.asia”). As a result of those social
movements, Taiwanese government executives
realized the opportunity to provide citizens official
spaces and online channels to let their voices be
heard in government decision-making processes.
This platform would also ideally prevent citizens
from taking the costly and aggressive approach to
fighting with the government. Therefore, Taiwan
Open Government, Public Digital Innovation Space
(PDIS), and the digital platforms, vTaiwan and JOIN,
were created. PDIS helps people to express bottomup demands and to ask the government to respond
with top-down support.

41

The responsibilities of the PDIS are:

• Create a space for the public and the
government to communicate with each other

• Incubate and facilitate public digital
innovation and service.

• Embed design thinking and culture in the
government of Taiwan.
As a starting point, PDIS built the Participation
Officers network in the government, each ministry
having at least one Participation Officers (POs).
POs are deeply involved in the conversation of civic
society and governmental divisions in order to drive
cultural change in the government. POs’ primary
responsibilities are proposing discussions of crossministerial issues with wider stakeholders, and
creating the space for government and citizens to
communicate with and collaborate about solutions
(Fig. 16).
Fig. 16
PO network -There are 32 ministries in the Taiwanese
government and each ministry has at
least one Participation Officer (PO).
Through the monthly meeting, POs
propose social issues and select a
main issue which is the most crucial or
tough one; they then start collecting
issue information and preparing for
collaboration with the public
(Illustration credit: PDIS, 2018).

Figure 16 has been removed due to copyright restrictions. The
information removed is a diagram adapted from Public Digital Innovation
Space, 2018

42

5. 2 Research outcomes with design
practices
Tackling complex social issues requires a profound
understanding of design thinking, but POs don’t have the
necessary knowledge of design mindset and methodologies.
In order to enable POs to practice design thinking and
methodologies in the government, I did three projects at
PDIS: collaboration guide, collaboration framework and
collaboration toolkits, Issue Mapper.

5.2.1 Fourth Research Question: What are some
of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public
Digital Innovation Space (PDIS)?
• Answer: Design team components
The user experience chapter at ODS includes a
lot of designers with UX, inclusive and service
design backgrounds so that the design culture is
mature and everyone shares the same language.
Conversely, in the PDIS team, we only have three
designers and we spend time educating people
on the basic knowledge of design thinking and
service design in order to bring people on the
journey of public collaboration. This type of
capacity building is time consuming and makes
the progress of design change slowly.

43

Fourth Research Question:

What are some of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)?
• Answer: Different ambassadors of
service design and rapid prototyping
ODSers are the ambassadors of rapid prototyping
and service design in the Ontario government.
In Taiwan, PDIS is facing a challenge in hiring
designers with practical experience. As an
alternative to having service designers codesigning iterative prototypes, PDIS has
built the Participation Officer (POs) network
described in the illustration above (Fig.16). In the
POs network the POs, who are civil servants,
facilitate conversations between government
authorities and civilians. POs are the medium and
ambassadors of service design in the government
of Taiwan. However, this POs network is only part
of the optimal solution. That is, even though civil
servants know how to conduct user research,
the solutions often times end up in the ideation
stage and seldom are prototyped or built using
visual and interaction design methods. Recruiting
professionals from the private sector is a big
shift in Taiwan and the HR policy is slowly being
changed. In addition to having the top-down
support from senior management and recruitment
policy changes, service designers in Taiwan will
need to become the ambassadors of service
design and rapid prototyping in government.

44

Fourth Research Question:

What are some of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)?
• Answer: The language of design
I encountered a challenge when I was writing the
user research guide for PDIS. That is, I was not
allowed to advocate service design and needed
to avoid using design-driven terminology in the
guide because the political environment is not
ready to embrace service design.
The leading digital governments, such as the UK,

Project Problem Statement

US, Australia and Canada, provide user research

“Participation
Officers need a
simple way to gain
comprehensive
knowledge about
user research in the
government.”

guides as a foundation to help government
authorities and civil servants to have a deeper
understanding of the purposes, components and
procedures of conducting user research. PDIS
focuses on facilitating collaboration workshops
to help the public to express their needs and
thoughts in the policy making process. These
workshops are one kind of user research.
However, there are different formats and
methodologies of user research and civil servants
need to understand that and have the ability to
choose the best type of user research based on
social issues. When I started at PDIS we identified
a need for a user research guide. My first project
was building the Collaboration Research Guide for
PDIS.
In order to avoid using overly design-driven
terminology for PDIS’s user research guide, I lead

45

an “undesign” workshop with my classmates at
Emily Carr University of Art and Design (ECUAD)
(Fig. 17). There were two activities in the workshop:
a fairy tale challenge and a practice of replacing
words. For the fairy tale challenge, I divided the
user research guide into five sections: purpose
of collaboration, planning for collaboration,
recruitment, prototyping and testing, and sharing
findings. I proposed a personality for each section
and added a representative food. My design peers
were separated into five groups. Each group was
challenged to write and illustrate a fairy tale to
interpret key points of their section. The second
activity was to invite peers to rework the overly
design-driven terminology.

Fig. 17
Photos of outcomes for
undesign workshop -Pringles for the paragraph of
prototyping ; M&M for the paragraph
of recruitment
46

Through the workshop activity, we identified
criteria for a “Collaboration Guide” at PDIS (Fig.
18). PDIS names their design toolkits “collaboration
tools”. Therefore, I named the user research guide
“collaboration research guide” rather than a user
research guide to fit into the existing naming
conventions at PDIS. This Collaboration Research
Guide is an overarching set of guidelines to
articulate a research process and the recommend
methodologies. One key insight from my
expert interview with Katherine Benjamin, who
pioneered the first empathy lab at ODS, was the
suggestion that the collaboration guide should
address power dynamics in collaboration, and
how to ensure less powerful groups or people
have a say in the collaboration. This provocation
led to my final workshop and case study described
in Chapter Six.

47

Fig. 18
Collaboration guide
physical prototype -In order to make the collaboration
guide more tangible and as the
teaching material for PDIS, I designed
the physical handout and deck of cards.
Collaboration guide
digital prototype -I designed the digital version on
the PO website which PDIS uses to
show general public or government
authorities the background and
knowledge about PO networks.
Therefore, this website can be one of
the touchpoint for people to learn more
about collaboration guide.

48

Fourth Research Question:

What are some of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)?
• Answer: The different roles in the
governments
At ODS, researchers, designers, and developers
are solution-makers. They focus on delivering fast
and useful services; they use agile methodologies
to offer services which fit real end-users’ needs
and behaviors. On the other hand, PDIS is a
consultant who guides POs to facilitate workshops
between users and government authorities, and
recommend next steps. Recommendations and
possible solutions often end at the ideation stage
without moving to prototyping and testing stages,
and don’t become working user services.
In my expert interview with Audrey Tang, the
first digital minister in Taiwan, Open Government
and PDIS, and one of the top 20 most influential
people in global digital governments ("Apolitical
Announces World's 100 Most Influential People in
Digital Government for 2018", 2019), the Taiwan
Open Government is experiencing a stage of
what philosopher Corcuff (2012) calls “liminality”.
The government of Taiwan is becoming more
aware of the need for better methods of
communication with the public and the needs of
digital government transition, and anticipating
these transitions without yet having expertise
is a liminal condition. PDIS is the organization

49

Fourth Research Question:

What are some of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)?
Project Problem Statement

accompanying the overall government in

“Participation
Officers get
confused about
when and how
to use the
collaboration
toolkits in the
problem-solving
and policy-making
process.”

overcoming the liminal stage by creating a space
for the public to have a say in the government
decision making process.
In order to give the incipient Taiwanese service
design sector some structure to grow upon,
I was tasked with building a Collaboration
Framework as my second design project at PDIS.
The Collaboration Framework is a tool that sits
alongside the above-described Collaboration
Research Guide, and will provide POs a clear
picture of how to practice design within
government decision making processes. One
of the main inspirations for our Collaboration
Framework was Nessler’s ideal of mashing-up
project management and the design thinking
process (Nessler, 2016). We created a framework
with four layers (Fig. 19): the first layer is a double
diamond problem solving process, the second
is a collaboration process, the third is the policy
making process and the last layer is the design
toolkit overview. The purpose is to let POs overlay
the processes and learn the relationship between
policy making, problem-solving and collaboration
processes in a tangible way. Moreover, POs can
know that each decision making process has
corresponding design activities and toolkits. the
same horizontal level to become a linear process.

50

Fourth Research Question:

What are some of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)?

Fig. 19
The tangible collaboration
framework -Four layers are printed on the
transparent film separately. In this way,
POs can overlay the processes and
learn the relationship between policy
making and design processes in a
tangible way. Moreover, POs can know
that each decision making process has
corresponding design activities and
toolkits.

I lead a second studio workshop with my design
peers at ECUAD (Fig. 20) to explore alternatives
of visual framework design and ways of learning
design methods. I divided my fellow designers
into 2 groups, designer and PO groups, to roleplay. The designer group proposed to move all
activities to the same horizontal level to become
a linear process. I made a linear version and then
received advice from faculties in open studio
day to discussed the pros and cons between the
linear and circle presentation of the framework.
Because the essence of an agile design and
collaboration process is iterative and not linear,
and to avoid misdirecting the concept, I decided
to keep my initial design, the circle version (Fig.
21). In designing a layered sequence for the
Collaboration Framework, keeping a more linear

Fig. 20

Photos of iteration workshop -The designer group worked on the
possible layout of framework and they
proposed to put all activities on the
same horizontal level.
The PO group wanted celebrities in
Taiwan to film videos to teach how to
use collaboration toolkits and provided
learning trip to visit other digital
governments to know the trends and
importance of design methods.

51

Fourth Research Question:

What are some of the informative differences between
Ontario Digital Service (ODS) and Public Digital Innovation
Space (PDIS)?
double diamond process and overlaying a more
agile and iterative circular process, my framework
will help PDIS shift design practices slowly from
linear to iterative models. These layers introduce
my first steps for embedding design thinking
within PDIS.

Fig. 21
Framework iterations
overview -At the bottom left corner is the version
I came up with after the workshop.
Based on the advice received from
professionals in open studio day and
the design and collaboration process is
not linear, and to avoid misleading the
concept, so PDIS team and I decided to
keep the circle version.

Fig. 22
Toolkits overview layer-Due to how PDIS keeps designing and
improving toolkits, the last layer, the
collaboration toolkits overview, needs
to be changed as new tools come up.
52

5.2.2 Fifth Research Question: How can service
designer build the service design culture
properly in the government where the
design culture is not mature and obvious?
• Answer: Use rapid prototyping as a
practical approach
The main accomplishment during my five months
working for Taiwan government service design
was to bring rapid prototyping ideas into PDIS.
This effort still needs development, and my Issue
Mapper project is the first iteration of embedding
rapid prototyping methods into PDIS.
Issue Mapper is a digital tool to help Taiwan’s

Project Problem Statement

Participation Officers (POs) document their

“Participation
Officers need a
better tool to keep
themselves on
track and share
their findings with
a wider range of
stakeholders.”

findings on urgent citizen-generated social
issues and to keep their work on track (Fig. 23).
My team comprised of an engineer, a project
manager, and myself, the interaction and service
designer. We were given seven categories in
an information taxonomy by which POs might
sort their content: problem categories, problem
details, current solutions, government responses,
roadblocks, stakeholders, and references. Under
each category, POs can upload the content which
they gather from the public or ministries. The
POs will use the Issue Mapper through their
whole workflow, by documenting and connecting

53

Fifth Research Question:

How can service designer build the service design
culture properly in the government where the design
culture is not mature and obvious?

Fig. 23
Issue Mapper iteration overview -Issue Mapper experienced 4 iterations.
We added the functions based on the
users’ feedback and needs, such as a
terminology dictionary, version history,
and document sharing. The project
owner insisted on keeping the colour
coding in order to indicate different
topics; as a designer, I tried different
layout presentations to ensure the
accessibility of colour contrast.

problems, from preparing for monthly meetings
until the end of the collaboration where the POs
export and submit their findings to ministers for
approval and resolution.
My PDIS team put the best problem-finding
practices into researching for this tool so that
POs will learn how to categorize information and
identify real problems. The current design of the
Issue Mapper supports the stage before design
collaboration but the final goal is to let the Issue
Mapper be support proper service design from
collecting data to writing proposals for policy
and regulation changes. After seven iterations
of co-design and user testing with POs, we were

54

Fifth Research Question:

How can service designer build the service design
culture properly in the government where the design
culture is not mature and obvious?
able to simplify the taxonomy to five categories
by eliminating stakeholders and references as
unused content. (Fig. 24).

Fig. 24

Issue Mapper most current
design --

Provide only five topics of information:
problem categories, problem details,
current solutions, government
responses, roadblocks.
Provide the default connection between
5 topics in the mode of mind mapping.

55

Fifth Research Question:

How can service designer build the service design
culture properly in the government where the design
culture is not mature and obvious?
• Answer: Make design work accountable
and visible
When practicing service design in an organization
with deep experience in design and research
methods, visibility of the work and accountability
for results already exist as best practices. In less
mature organizations, visibility and accountability
can help collaborators to understand service
design and take them on the journey toward
practicing these approaches. While I was working
on projects for Taiwan’s PDIS I was working
remotely. Remote work made it difficult to show
people the value of service design. In order to
make my work more visible and accountable,
I compiled all my projects and findings into a
presentation given at the end of my contract.
In my presentation for Issue Mapper, aside from
service blueprint (Fig. 25), I used personas (Fig.
26) to show future designers at PDIS the types
of end users they might work with. As Bertulis
(2019) describes, there are several distinct types
of personas designers might use in an extended
design process. There might be the personas that
help map out potential users in a designers mind
as generative brainstorming activity, in contrast
to personas which document and consolidate
user research findings. Personas might be built

56

Fifth Research Question:

How can service designer build the service design
culture properly in the government where the design
culture is not mature and obvious?
or revised as a team-building activity to ensure
everyone is on the same page, might be used to
test for accessibility. Lastly, teams might build an
aspiration design target at nearing the build phase
of a design process to help with narrative design.
(E. Bertulis, Personal Communication, February
27, 2019). By distinguishing between different
rigorous implementations of personas, designers
not only learn about end-users from different
perspectives, but also learn to distinguish between
marketing user models such as quantitatively
derived user segmentation brand types. My
personas are used for consolidating user research
findings and I hope to revise these personas with
other team members in the future.

Fig. 25

Issue Mapper service blueprint
(Illustration credit: author, 2019).

Fig. 26

Issue Mapper personas--

Novice PO, Professional PO,
and PDIS PO lead (Illustration
credit: author, 2019).

57

Fifth Research Question:

How can service designer build the service design
culture properly in the government where the design
culture is not mature and obvious?
• Answer: Be a passionate farmer
Gardening could be a metaphor for PDIS practices
because building design culture takes time and
patience. Service designers are farmers, POs are
the seeds, design toolkits are equipment, water,
soil and sunlight. That is, the service designer
plants the POs into each ministry and then
gradually cultivates them using design toolkits.
Looking back to my first month with PDIS, I tried
to implement the practice of rapid prototyping
without fully understanding the capacity and
goals of PDIS. After these five months of practice
and the feedback from peers and instructors, I
realized that as service designers in the public
sector, we need to be conscious about not being
too rushed and pushing the pace of growth
immediately.

• Answer: Consistent hard work from
different levels of stakeholders
Mergel (2016) uses the US federal government to
illustrate the building blocks of an agile innovation
management approach and she mentions that the
base layer is the policies. Governments need to
create the HR policies to recruit professionals who
are skilled in the design and innovative practices
of the private sector to work in the government.

58

The strategy of building design culture needs
to be changed based on country development,
design culture in general and the organization.
With a country like Taiwan, cultivating design
culture is a process of mediating between
generations and needs two-way strategies: first,
the upper level managers need to make the
recruitment process more flexible to create more
opportunities for designers and innovators in the
government; second, the organization (such as
PDIS) needs to slowly establish design thinking
and methodologies into general civil servants’
day-to-day practices.

5.2.3 Sixth Research Questions: What can a
service designer learn from design in the
public sector?
• There are no perfect and apolitical
decisions
According to the interview with Ms. Tang, she
mentions that there are three things that need
to be considered as part of design ethics in the
government: certainty of social good, social
justice and democratic purpose. As a member of
making effort to social innovation, it’s difficult to
include these three components perfectly. On the
contrary, they usually conflict with each other and
as public workers we only can find the balance to

59

make the best decision.

5.2.4 Seventh Research Question: What has to
change when methods from the private
sector are brought into government?
• Answer: The ways of using service
design and rapid prototyping
My two practice areas, ODS and PDIS, just have
started practicing rapid prototyping and service
design. I was working on small scale projects.
Because my projects were mostly internal
services, we had low chance for things to go
wrong in ways that could be catastrophic for
vulnerable users. If we practice service design on
large-scale government projects for vulnerable
users in the same way as we practice design in
the private sector, we run the risk of exacerbating
inequalities and uneven power relations (Kimbell
& Bailey, 2017, p.222; Dombrowski, Harmon & Fox,
2016). The main challenge in adapting existing
service design methodologies for government
use is the success measure of profit. That is,
traditional business measures of success such as
profitability, as well as user-centered objectives,
need to be redefined in the government context
because the stakeholders’ needs are not the same
as customers’ needs (Polaine, Løvlie, and Reason,
2013).

60

With the above concerns in mind, service design
methods in government context can continue to
be improved. Improvements includes possible
new procedures, limitations of the method, when
the method can be used, benefits of the method,
and case studies. The article “Social JusticeOriented Interaction Design” elaborates six
strategies, including designing for transformation,
recognition, reciprocity, enablement, distribution,
and accountability. These strategies are possible
further stepping stones to ensure social justice
priorities for policy making and public service
design projects.

61

5. 3 Conclusion of Chapter 5
By working on four projects for Taiwan’s PDIS, conducting
user testing and research for each project, I helped bring
a new way of practicing design to Taiwanese government
service design. The iterative design work we did on the Issue
Mapper project manifested feedback and service revisions
that let my team members become the ambassadors of
rapid prototyping methods. Embedding integrated rapid
prototyping and service design methods will take time and
will still take consistent hard work in the future. We were
not yet able to establish a show n’ tell culture for people
to share their efforts with stakeholders, which is a crucial
part of storytelling and promoting rapid prototyping and
service design. Nonetheless, our work provided significant
alternate ways of helping PDIS implement service design in
the government, from guidelines to frameworks.

62

6. Case study: Design ethics
in the public sector
Consideration of ethics in design practice is particularly
important in the government context, as the repercussions
of bad design (loss of civil liberties, loss of trust) are
profound. One aspect of ethics in design, which was
researched as part of this thesis work, is to explore the
power imbalances in design collaborations. There are many
causes that can affect power dynamics, such as languages,
social hierarchy, gendered conventions, and perceived
privileging of different professions. In this chapter, describe
the insights gleaned from a workshop we developed to
explore power dynamics in collaborations.

6. 1 Power Dynamic workshop
6.1.1 Workshop introduction
There were two main purposes of this workshop:
to test whether the use of service design methods
helps the future team to work more efficiently, and
to explore power dynamics by using language as
the element to affect the power relationships in the
collaboration.
In the government, projects might take three to
seven years to finish and the political volatility
might not allow designers to work until the end of
the project. Practicing rapid prototyping faces the
same challenge; after the rapid prototyping team
develops the proof of concepts, the project might

63

be taken over by a new team. This team might
develop the project based on the most current
prototype and a presentation of previous iterations.
In order to carry over the original design intent, it
is important to create documentation of discovery
and consultation activities that richly inform
a given design strategy. To this end, I created
personas, service blueprints, and user journey maps
to onboard future designers. The documentation
included the components of service and insights
about end-users, information to help revise the
service blueprint.
The second issue; addressing potential power
dynamics on a collaborative team, I using Mandarin
material in my workshop. I was interested in
seeing how Mandarin speakers and non-Mandarin
speakers might change when not using English as
the dominant language.
There were 20 participants and 3 Mandarin
facilitators, all from Master of Design 2019 and
2020 cohorts. This workshop took around 40
minutes and involved three activities: a warm-up
touchpoints activity, a service blueprint brainstorm
activity, and a feedback activity. The purpose of this
activity was to use the medium of language as a
provocation or trigger to help participants actively
reconsider feelings of power and influence. By

64

disrupting the participants’ (often unrecognised)
privilege of being a native language speaker, my
objective was to examine whether the challenges
associated with negotiating a language barrier
would alter how users negotiated a service design
activity. Specifically, if this artificially created power
dynamic could bring awareness and empathy to
participants with regard to their perspective on
power dynamics in teams and institutions.

6.1.2 Warm-up touchpoints activity (2 minutes)
After briefly introducing service design, participants
divided into pairs and had 2 minutes to write down
the touchpoints of CAR2GO. This activity helped
participants to engage with service design in
English.
Fig. 27

Photos of the warm-up
touchpoints activity -Participants were asked to identity
some touchpoints of CAR2GO service.
After 2 minutes, most of the paper
was blank; Fig 24. CAR2GO service
blueprint -- I taught participants basic
service design by using the CAR2GO
service blueprint which I created.

65

6.1.3 Service blueprint brainstorm activity (20
minutes)
The scenario I gave to participants was they were
the new team to take over the project of designing
Issue Mapper. The team was composed of a team
lead, service designer, UX designer, user researcher,
diplomat, content editor, policy expert, and
engineer. The task was to understand the service
components of Issue Mapper and then write down
the problems of the service blueprint.

Fig. 28

Photos of teams trying
the Issue Mapper -During this section, English speakers
engaged and lead the talk.

Fig. 29

Photos of teams understanding
service blueprint -Mandarin speakers lead the talk
and translated the content. The first
and third group mainly relied on the
Mandarin facilitator to translate and
explain the content. Aside from having
Mandarin speakers to translate, the
English speakers at the second group
downloaded google translate app to
help themselves in the beginning and
made notes in English.

66

6.1.4 Feedback activity (10 minutes)
Participants could use whichever language they
were comfortable with to answer the three
questions on the spreadsheet:

• What are your takeaways from the
service blueprint activity?
• Aside from the materials given to you,
what other material or resources would
have helped you to understand the
activity?
• How do you feel about the power
relationship between Mandarin speakers
and non-Mandarin speakers in the
workshop? (You can use either drawing
or words to elaborate.)

Fig. 30

Photos of feedback sheet -An English speaker gave up because of
the language barrier. Some participants
wrote down the feedback in their first
language.

67

6. 2 Workshop outcome
I used the above three questions to describe outcomes
which include both my and the participants’ takeaways from
the workshop.

6.2.1 What are your takeaways from the service
blueprint activity?
• Answer: Be patient (give extra time as
the facilitator)
In the twenty-minute brainstorm activity,
Mandarin facilitators spent two-thirds of the
time translating and onboarding team members
and had much less time to work on revising the
service blueprint. Facilitators mentioned that
they needed to be very patient to help people out.
This is similar to my practice in the Taiwanese
government in that I spent so much time teaching
people service design and had less energy to
spend on actual design work. On the other hand,
teaching people is actually a important part of
the service design practice in the government
and establish the foundation of government
transformation.

• Answer: Building empathy and trust
The main takeaway for the participants was
building empathy for people with different

68

languages. Participant B mentioned that the
people who always talk confidently in the class
were suddenly frustrated and quiet because of the
language barrier. Conversely, people all turned
their attention on the Mandarin speakers, who
had talked quietly before, and relied on them.
Participant J mentions that as an English speaker,
they started relying on others and trying to trust
them because they had zero knowledge about the
text. While at ODS, I did user testing at empathy
lounge and through this activity we built empathy
together around language, design fields and
genders.

6.2.2 Aside from the materials given to you,
what other material or resources would
have helped you to understand the
activity?
• Answer: Tools help to empower people
Most people wanted translators to bring their
voice and power back. During the workshop,
I observed that the majority of non-Mandarin
speakers relied on the Mandarin facilitators;
some of them decided to download a translation
app immediately to help themselves out; some
of them gave up before even trying to tackle the
language problem. Proper tools can empower
people and via this team activity of revising

69

the service blueprint, I found that people were
unfamiliar with service design terminologies. In
order to make service design more accessible
for non-service designers, I will include a service
design terminology handbook and slide for future
workshops and the hand-off presentations.

• Answer: Accountability on the service
blueprint
There are four standards for Taiwan Open
Government: transparency, participation,
accountability and inclusion (“Participation
Officer”, 2018). In this workshop, participants were
given their job title and looked for the part of the
service blueprint related to their responsibilities.
I plan to do a revision to point out these roles
on the service blueprint and this can help team
members to work more accountability and
implement the accountability as well.

• Answer: More background introduction
Without the comprehensive introduction of
the collaboration process in the Taiwanese
government, workshop participants had a hard
time understanding the task. This is an issue
when new designers work within the government,
and they often need more time and support to
understand how governments work. I hope my

70

research can make governments work more
transparently and help future designers to work
within the government more efficiently.

6.2.3 How do you feel about the power
relationship between Mandarin speakers
and non-Mandarin speakers in the
workshop?
• Answer: Multilingual designers had the
most input into the design
Service designers often struggle in government
because they generally don't have a
comprehensive understanding of the language
and machinery of government. Similarly,
public servants rarely have a sophisticated
design vocabulary, and therefore struggle to
communicate effectively with expert designers.
Not sharing same languages, whether English
to Mandarin or design to government, makes
communication more difficult.

• Service design provided a level playing
field
In the public sector, we need to avoid seeing
the problem across only one dimension and
balance evolutionary dynamic between the public
and public managers (Gil-Garcia & MartinezMoyano, 2007). In this workshop, service design

71

methodologies were used as the medium of
collaboration, empowering service designers
to talk and encouraging participants to give
attention to the design prototypes. This workshop
has inspired the possibility of using service
design as a means to reduce conflict and power
relationships in collaborations. That is, given that
most people are not familiar with service design,
it can therefore be used as a starting point for
people to learn about the issue and build the same
knowledge together in the collaboration.

6. 3 Conclusion of Chapter 6
Currently, service design is still in its infancy in government;
service designers can build on this enthusiasm to open
conversations and build bridges between silos in ways that
were previously unavailable. For example, Observing nonMandarin speakers using translation apps to empower
themselves inspired me to offer a translation tool to explain
service design terminologies. This workshop shows another
method of using service design in the government decision
making processes, as a tool to reduce conflict and build
awareness of power relationships in collaborations.

72

7. Conclusion
Through design work with the governments of Ontario and
Taiwan, as well as studio practices and workshops at ECUAD,
I have outlined and given examples of the importance of
intertwined service design and agile development processes,
as well as issues of social justice in government service
design. I encountered similar limitations when practicing
service design in both governments. As service designers
in the public sector, we have less authority to manipulate
other touchpoints because we are newcomers and people
do not recognize the usage and value of service design in the
bureaucratic, political hierarchy.
The slow rate of change, undervaluing accomplishment
and political volatility can frustrate designers to leave the
government, especially for junior designers, who are seeking
to build a portfolio and career with diverse and highly
innovative projects. Outcomes of impact take time to be
measured, as do the consequences of practicing service
design and agile methodology including positive and negative
influences. Through my research questions and case-study
based answers, I have identified the many important issues
and lessons service designers might practice when working
in the public sector: We need to be patient, to not expect
to achieve the outcomes and inclusivity11 immediately and
to slow ourselves down in order to help team members
and stakeholders get on the same page. This research
demonstrates that rapid prototyping can be an inspirational
jumping off point for service design in governments.

11 U s e r r e s e a r c h d i d n ’ t e x i s t i n t h e

Government of Ontario until user research
and prototyping labs started practicing it.
Now, user research has become a thing
that everyone wants in the Government
of Ontario. Therefore, we found that
people need performativity and visibility
to understand new things (K. Benjamin,
Personal Communication, February 21,
2019).

73

As digital service design becomes accepted practice in
the public sector, the three principles of service design;
user-centric design, co-creative methods, and holistic
touchpoints, become tools for redesigning government
services in general, as well as digital government services.
Moreover, through the power dynamic workshop, I explored
issues of design ethics in public collaborations found
opportunities to revise my service design practice.
Now is the golden moment to let service design
complement Digital and Open Government initiatives, cocreating solutions with a wider range of stakeholders and
touchpoints, and letting design practices help give citizens a
voice in designing government services.

74

8. Reference
Anthopoulos, L., Reddick, C., Giannakidou, I., &
Mavridis, N. (2016). Why e-government projects
fail? An analysis of the Healthcare.gov website.
Government Information Quarterly, 33(1), 161173. doi: 10.1016/j.giq.2015.07.003
Apolitical Announces World's 100 Most Inf luential
People in Digital Government for 2018. (2018).
Retrieved from https://www.prdistribution.
com/news/apolitical-announces-worlds-100most-influential-people-in-digital-governmentfor-2018/3465467
Benjamin, K., & Potts, H. (2018). Digital transformation
in government: Lessons for digital health?.
DIGITAL HEALTH, 4, 205520761875916. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1177/2055207618759168
Chang, F. (2018). Participation Officers Network.
Retrieved from https://issuu.com/pdis.tw/
docs/2018.10.01_participation_officers_n
Committing your organisation to a strategic use of
service design. (2019). Retrieved from https://
www.hellon.com/service-design/committingorganisation-strategic-use-service-design/
Corcuff, S. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.lse.
ac.uk/fang-test/TaiwanProgramme/Journal/

75

JournalContents/TCP4Corcuff.pdf
Design council. (2018). Design in the Public Sector
evaluation report 2018. Retrieved from https://
www.designcouncil.org.uk/resources/report/
design-public-sector-lessons-applying-designapproaches-public-sector
Dombrowski, L., Harmon, E., & Fox, S. (2016). Social
Justice-Oriented Interaction Design: Outlining
Key Design Strategies and Commitments [Ebook].
Brisbane, Australia: DIS. Retrieved from https://
ellieharmon.com/docs/DombrowskiHarmonFoxSocialJustice-DIS2016.pdf
Edgar, M. Most of government is mostly service
design most of the time. Discuss. Retrieved from
https://blog.mattedgar.com/2015/05/12/most-ofgovernment-is-mostly-service-design-most-of-thetime-discuss/
Gil-Garcia, J., & Martinez-Moyano, I. (2007).
Understanding the evolution of e-government:
The inf luence of systems of rules on public
sector dynamics. Government Information
Quarterly, 24(2), 266-290. doi: 10.1016/
j.giq.2006.04.005
G0V.asia. Retrieved from http://g0v.asia/#section-3

76

Government Digital Service. How we do agile. (2013).
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0XpAtr24uUQ&list=PL5tovFCB3CsAFicGXOSHZ
iF-FjIMb3Zfd&index=7
Government Digital Service. Discovery, alpha, beta,
live. (2013). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=_cyI7DMhgYc&list=PL5tovFCB3CsA
FicGXOSHZiF-FjIMb3Zfd&index=2
HHS CTO: Technology in healthcare is a Trojan Horse
for culture change. (2018). MobiHealthNews.
Retrieved 5 April 2018, from https://www.
mobihealthnews.com/content/hhs-cto-technologyhealthcare-trojan-horse-culture-change
Jang, p. (2016). Take part in Taiwan g0v, what they
have changed?. Retrieved from https://theinitium.
com/article/20160601-taiwan-g0v/
Kimbell, L., & Bailey, J. (2017). Prototyping and the new
spirit of policy-making. Codesign, 13(3), 214-226.
doi: 10.1080/15710882.2017.1355003
Leetaru, K. (2019). System Failure: What I've
Learned As A Data Scientist In Washington.
Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/
sites/kalevleetaru/2016/03/29/system-failurewhat-ive-learned-as-a-data-scientist-in-

77

washington/#3a681e03fcee
McKinsey Center for Government. (2016). Digital by
default: A guide to transforming government
(p. 5). McKinsey Center for Government.
Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/~/
media/mckinsey/industries/public%20sector/
our%20insights/transforming%20government%20
through%20digitization/digital-by-default-a-guideto-transforming-government-final.ashx
Mergel, I. (2016). Agile innovation management in
government: A research agenda. Government
Information Quarterly, 33(3), 516-523. doi:
10.1016/j.giq.2016.07.004
Morales, D. (2017). What is Service Design A tale of
two coffee shops. Retrieved from https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=HNOY8GLVy_8
Nessler, D. (2016). How to mash-up and benefit from
PM and the Design Thinking Process. Retrieved
from https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-mash-up-andbenefit-from-pm-and-hcd-ux-design-thinking89ea28f47a63
Ontario Digital Service. (2018). Discovery as a Service.
Open Government. (2019). Retrieved from https://

78

open.canada.ca/en
Polaine, A., Løvlie, L., and Reason, B.. (2013). Service
design. Brooklyn, NY: Rosenfeld Media.
Participation Officer (2018). Retrieved from https://
po.pdis.tw/en/index.html
Quicksey, A. (2018). Service Design for Public Policy
– Angelica Quicksey – Medium. Retrieved from
https://medium.com/@angelquicksey/servicedesign-for-policy-b0a9408dced1
Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services.
(2013). Retrieved from Design Council:
www.designcouncil.org.uk/ourwork/Insight/
Research/2013-restarting-britain-2/
Ruiz, L. C. (2014). Service design 101 | ACM
Interactions. Retrieved from http://interactions.
acm.org/blog/view/service-design-101
Service Design Network. Bridgeable: Redefining the
TELUS Renewals Experience. (2018). Retrieved
from https://www.service-design-network.org/
headlines/bridgeable-redefining-the-telusrenewals-experience
Service Design Network. Hellon: "Baby"- Reducing
Stress and Increasing Parent Spend Through

79

Design. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.
service-design-network.org/headlines/hellonbaby-reducing-stress-and-increasing-parentspend-through-design
Service design playbook. (2018). Ontario.ca. Retrieved
5 April 2018, from https://www.ontario.ca/page/
service-design-playbook
Service Design - Design is Not Just for Products.
(2018). The Interaction Design Foundation.
Retrieved 5 April 2018, from https://www.
interaction-design.org/literature/article/servicedesign-design-is-not-just-for-products
Sheppard, B., Sarrazin, H., Kouyoumjian, G., & Dore,
F. (2018). The business value of design. Retrieved
from https://www.mckinsey.com/businessfunctions/mckinsey-design/our-insights/thebusiness-value-of-designSu, X. (2018). Design can
solve problems but how to solve the problems
in the Taiwanese design industry?|United Daily
News. Retrieved from https://udn.com/news/
story/6861/3225375
Stewart, K., Dubow, T., Hofman, J., & Stolk, C. (2016).
Social change and public engagement with policy
and evidence. RAND Corporation. Retrieved
from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/

80

9. List of illustrations
RR1750.html
Figure 1. TELUS user journey map
Figure 2. Rapid prototyping team schedule at ODS
Figure 3. Digital DSS self-assessment iteration overview
Figure 4. New self-assessment process
Figure 5. Introduction video clips
Figure 6. Sub-Navigation system design iteration overview
Figure 7. Sub-navigation final design outcome
Figure 8. FEATS design iteration overview
Figure 9. FEATS agents’ current user journey
Figure 10. FEATS service blueprint
Figure 11. FEATS agents journey map
Figure 12. FEATS hypothetical of the public’s journey map
Figure 13. Service design in the rapid prototyping process
Figure 14. From micro to macro perspective
Figure 15. From macro to micro perspective
Figure 16. PO network
Figure 17. Photos of outcomes for undesign workshop
Figure 18. Collaboration guide physical/digital prototype

81

Figure 19. The tangible collaboration framework
Figure 20. Photos of iteration workshop
Figure 21. Framework iterations overview
Figure 22. Toolkits overview layer
Figure 23. Issue Mapper iteration overview
Figure 24. Issue Mapper most current design
Figure 25. Issue Mapper service blueprint
Figure 26. Issue Mapper personas
Figure 27. Photos of the warm-up touchpoints activity
Figure 28. Photos of teams trying the Issue Mapper
Figure 29. Photos of teams understanding service blueprint
Figure 30. Photos of feedback sheet

82

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY
OF ART + DESIGN, 2019
© Hsinyu Kuo, 2019