Service design is about understanding and addressing the real needs of people: developing solutions that are not only effective but also come from empathy, equity and inclusion. By focusing on the human experience, service design helps to build skills, confidence, and community cohesion, proving that its principles are as valuable in the living room as they are in the boardroom.
Being part of Dundee & Angus College means that our service design training and education is there to support corporate strategy and development and to make an impact on local communities around us.
The work we supported in Linlathen, Dundee is a great example of this, demonstrating how service design can empower families facing education and employment challenges to support resilience and collaboration. This approach not only addressed immediate needs for local people but also sowed the seeds for sustainable change to make families lives better.
Background
The Dundee Pathfinder is a collaborative initiative between the Scottish Government, Dundee City Council (DCC), the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP), and Social Security Scotland. This partnership aims to tackle child poverty through a holistic, community-based approach. Dundee was chosen as a pathfinder area to test systemic changes by bringing together local partners to overcome barriers and efficiently use resources tailored to the individual needs of families.
Value of Service Design
The Service Design Academy (SDA) was engaged by the Dundee Pathfinder team to apply the Scottish Approach to Service Design (SAtSD). The aim was to create services centred around the needs of families rather than the organisational structure of the service providers. This approach helped to uncover innovative solutions, provide a supportive environment for reflection, and identify opportunities for scaling the initiative to other areas.
Community Engagement
In addition to the work undertaken by SDA, Dundee & Angus College Learner and Community Engagement team (LACE team) was also a key part of the Pathfinder project by employing a whole family learning model to facilitate cross-generational impact. To fully understand the needs of the community, the LACE team embedded themselves in the Linlathen Hub and the Community Food Larder, gaining invaluable understanding of the lived experiences and insights into community perspectives. Through these conversations, the team were able to understand the residents’ needs and co-design learning opportunities to achieve the biggest impact. The learning opportunities offered were a direct result of working with the community to meet their needs and aspirations.
Key participants included representatives from Dundee City Council, DWP, Social Security Scotland, Enable Brooksbank Centre, Access to Industry, and local families from Linlathen. These stakeholders participated in a three-day series of workshops designed to tackle the challenges of delivering integrated, effective support to reduce child poverty.
The workshops were structured around the Double Diamond design process, which includes four phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. This framework guided the participants through an exploration of current challenges, identification of core issues, development of solutions, and planning for implementation.
Design Challenge
The design challenge was: “How might we re-evaluate our services to deliver a whole family approach to people in Linlathen, Dundee, and our communities?”
Day 1
The focus was on understanding the current state of services and identifying key challenges. Participants explored empathy, biases, and assumptions, using tools like empathy mapping and knowledge capture to frame their understanding.
Day 2
This day centred on user research, with participants conducting listening sessions with local families to gather insights into their experiences and needs. The data collected helped to refine the understanding of existing barriers and opportunities for improvement.
Day 3
The final day was devoted to developing prototypes and planning for future service models. Participants engaged in activities like the Service Model Canvas and Backcasting to envision a scalable and sustainable pathfinder initiative.
Outputs
The workshops produced several key outputs, including detailed insights into user experiences, a refined understanding of the design challenge, and a set of prototype solutions. The exercises led to the creation of a vision statement for the pathfinder and identified “7 Bold Steps” necessary for achieving this vision, such as
- building community relationships
- securing dedicated funding
- enhancing data sharing among partners.
Overall, the Dundee Child Poverty Pathfinder has successfully increased employability opportunities for 188 families in Linlathen, who face various inequalities. This has provided essential support for parents to secure income, directly addressing child poverty among the 256 children in these households. This has been done with the support of many partner agencies in Dundee across the employability ecosystem including Dundee & Angus College’s LACE team.
Katie Murrie, lead educator at SDA said: “Our small contribution to the wider project demonstrates the potential of service design to transform public services by focusing on user-centred, collaborative approaches. Those already working on the Pathfinder project naturally employed a ‘designerly’ mindset, starting with empathy, focusing on connecting with members of the community with lived experience, and building relationships across the community and beyond.
When SDA were asked to help bring a service design approach to the project, it was clear that we were there to provide a structure for the Pathfinder work to continue, not to change mindsets and demonstrate the value of service design like we would normally start a project like this with – that was already demonstrated clearly from the co-design approaches taken, research data collected and more importantly, from the strong relationships that had been forged within the community. In my eyes, those relationships have been the key to success in this project.”
