Why user-centred design matters in public services

With ten years' experience in user-centred design, it stops being just a job and becomes the way you look at services. A mindset, if you will.

It's very rare that I experience a poor service without instinctively redesigning it in my head. That's both a blessing and a curse. Whether it’s a confusing digital journey or a poorly designed lift display, I find myself immediately thinking about how it could work better.

Worse still, you never know when inspiration will strike. It might be on holiday at the breakfast buffet, where the layout forces hungry holidaymakers to criss-cross the room, queue in all the wrong places and narrowly avoid sending mini croissants flying off their plates. It sounds trivial, but it is a perfect example of what happens when a service is designed without observing the people who actually use it.

UCD reduces delivery risk before it becomes delivery failure

When we take the time to include UCD in delivery, we provide decision-makers with insight into user needs, behaviours and barriers. In turn, this creates services that are more likely to be used, used correctly, and deliver a smoother experience for the people relying on them.

Sometimes the consequences of poor design are relatively minor. If it's difficult to create an account for an online fashion retailer, you might grumble your way through it or simply shop elsewhere. But what happens when that journey is for someone applying for a visa, accessing housing support, or renewing a passport? Suddenly, poor design becomes much more than an inconvenience.

That's why evidence matters. User-centred design helps organisations move beyond assumptions and make informed decisions based on real user needs. It prevents investment in features or products that people don't want, need or understand. It identifies risks earlier, reduces costly rework and helps teams focus their efforts where they will deliver the greatest value.

There's a reason most organisations have moved away from traditional waterfall delivery. It's far easier, and far cheaper, to test, learn and iterate than it is to discover late in the process that you've built the wrong thing.

Case study: On a recent central government engagement, evidence-based analysis challenged existing assumptions and identified an issue 25 times larger than originally understood. This enabled the client to reprioritise investment and shift from a narrow technical fix to a broader service-led intervention, ensuring resources were focused where they would have the greatest impact.

Better services come from better decisions

One of the biggest misconceptions about UCD is that it's simply a design activity. People often think of prototypes, journey maps and workshops, but the real value of UCD goes far beyond that. At its core, UCD is a decision-making discipline.

Every project involves difficult choices. What should we prioritise? Where should we invest? Which problem are we actually trying to solve? UCD helps answer those questions with evidence rather than assumptions. Through research, teams gain a clearer understanding of user needs, behaviours and barriers, helping them focus effort where it will have the greatest impact. More often than not, the evidence reveals a more nuanced problem than the organisation originally set out to solve.

Just as importantly, UCD helps organisations see the bigger picture. It's easy to optimise an individual process or system while unintentionally making the overall experience worse. Users don't experience services in silos; they experience them end to end. Understanding that journey helps leaders balance user needs with operational realities, ensuring decisions work not just for the organisation, but for the people who rely on the service. The result is better decision-making, lower delivery risk and, ultimately, better outcomes.

Case study: On a separate central government engagement, creating a service blueprint exposed previously unidentified risks, established a shared understanding across workstreams and informed the design of future service improvements. The resulting analysis was relevant to over 79% of calls to the service.

UCD delivers value for money

One of the most common challenges in digital delivery is the pressure to move quickly. Tight deadlines, competing priorities and limited budgets can make research and design feel like a nice-to-have rather than a necessity. In reality, research and design are often what prevent teams from wasting time and money on the wrong solution.

We've all seen projects spend months developing features that nobody uses, solving problems that don't exist, or creating additional complexity for already frustrated users. User-centred design helps organisations avoid this by grounding decisions in evidence rather than assumptions.

It also helps teams make better investment decisions. When you understand where users struggle and what's causing operational challenges, it's much easier to prioritise work that delivers value rather than spreading effort across multiple competing priorities.

Good design also creates savings long after delivery. Accessible, intuitive services reduce avoidable contacts, lower support costs and improve adoption. Users can complete tasks more easily, while operational teams spend less time helping people navigate difficult journeys - it’s a win for both the organisation and the people using the service.

Perhaps most importantly, particularly as organisations explore the opportunities presented by AI, UCD encourages continuous learning. Research doesn't just answer today's questions; it helps teams make smarter decisions for tomorrow.

Case study: On another central government engagement, we flexed multidisciplinary teams to meet changing demand, challenged scope and delivery approaches to maximise value, and reused GOV.UK patterns to reduce cost and rework. This accelerated releases from 4-6 week cycles to real-time deployment, decommissioned five unsupported platforms and delivered annual savings of c.£410k.

The most successful public services are not delivered through technology alone. They are delivered through a deep understanding of users and the confidence to make better decisions earlier.

User-centred design is not a design add-on or a phase in a delivery plan or roadmap. It is a practical way to reduce risk, improve outcomes and get the best value from public money. Most importantly, it helps ensure services work for the people who need them most. That's my why.