On October 11, 2018, during the Service Design Global Conference in Dublin, Head of the Jury Kerry Bodine and President of SDN Birgit Mager took the stage to co-host the Service Design Award Ceremony and announce the finalists and six winners selected by the international jury of service design experts.
37. Anders Hakfelt
Dominic Quigley
Kostja Paschalidis
Patti Aldermann
Developing a Police Forces
Digital Experience for Citizens
Professional
Non-Profit/Public Sector
Giulio Fagiolini
Nour Diab
Jappreet Kitty
Emma Gervasio
Marjo Kaszonyi
Kathrin Dimai
Tom Holloway
James Robertson
Lisa Williams
Lily Sinclair
Nicholas Panayi
Emma Cooper
FJORD
38. How to better serve
citizens, than
with a phone number?
PROJECT BRIEF
39. How do you listen to, and solve,
the problems of 2.8 million citizens?
RESEARCH CHALLENGE
In 2014, West Midlands Police (WMP) committed to a radical transformation programme - part of this transformation includes improving public contact and defining new channels through which the police could respond to citizens’ needs—not only in a more efficient and effective way, but in a more inclusive way as well.
Since the beginning, it was clear that a traditional approach couldn't have worked. We had huge new world to catch up on, and just talking to people wouldn’t have been enough. The level of diversity - both in the people and in the services provided was immense.
It’s at this point that we realised that combining qual and quant research would provide us with real, actionable insights. We would have added scale to our findings thanks to the underlying data, and depth to our data due to the additional context provided by the interviews.
This work, led us to define specific journeys and specific frustrations and painpoints - and what opportunity could digital bring to answer those needs. This was a very good starting point that helped us frame the problems and opportunities much better.
But also, from the analysis of these 3500 calls - that the Force had received and categorised - we started using data visualisation to extract meaningful insights that wouldn’t be visible otherwise.
We were finally able to see the stories behind the data, and the police would talk us through those, telling us the differences between a linear journey for a crime report for insurance purposes, and ASB call that usually doesn’t get reported due to the range of the outcomes. - which is one of the reason why people are not actually calling, being scared of the outcome
Moreover we were able to match the stories we heard in the interviews with the depth of the data of the over 3500 calls cataloged by the police. We created data infused journeys made with multiple variables, accounting for each different segment of callers with variations in the journeys based on the data provided.
These journeys were then used later in our process and not only allowed us to create and measure our service concepts against all the possible variations along the citizen journey but also became the lingua franca between us, allowing to discuss the journeys and uncover new insights gain trust.
We then worked on prototypes which brought each concept and journey to life, and allowed the police stakeholders to discuss each concept and validate it within the organisation.
Once prioritised the service concepts we also worked on a set of tools that allowed our delivery to scale quickly and efficiently - a brand new design language wouldn’t just work for our concept but would have been homogeneous across their digital channels.
The project is now live - and this is how it looks like, allowing to report and track cases online in only 6 min (vs 20 min. This already affected the waiting time on the phone - where now the people who really need a voice on the other end - have only to wait 2 min (vs 12 min).
But also allows people, through a step by step guide, to understand better their situation, problems and possible actions and outcomes. This not only gives the police the ability to track trends and optimise the service - but also allows citizens who previously might not have felt comfortable reporting a crime to have a clearer understanding of of the process and an idea of what to expect if they were to report an incident - and report it when they feel they are ready
To conclude, our biggest learning has been that even when the scale makes it difficult, we’ve really seen how the data combined with the depth of the journeys transformed numbers into stories. Because at the end of the day, the problems that we needed to solve, where the stories of people’s lives.
To conclude, our biggest learning has been that even when the scale makes it difficult, we’ve really seen how the data combined with the depth of the journeys transformed numbers into stories. Because at the end of the day, the problems that we needed to solve, where the stories of people’s lives.