Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Demos sees the light
Demos has just launched a publication by Ed Straw tackling the knotty subject of generalists versus specialists in the public sector, which has been blogged by Sophia Parker, who suggests: "Perhaps then what we need are civil servants who are specialists in systems and process design. In other words, people who are able to craft a process that is designed to include as many people as possible to participate in the creation of value." A response:
Welcome to the - user experience - world, Sophia.
There have been a fair few people who, for some time, have advocated on behalf of users, workers, humans in general, however you want to describe the people who have to use 'systems' in the widest sense of soft systems (products, services, environments etc).
There is even a whole literature, built up over the last couple of decades: check out participatory design, co-design, contextual design, user-centred design, design research etc etc.
Users, front-line workers, citizens etc. can contribute enormously to the framing and delivery of services. And their absence can severely handicap initiatives. Or make them pointless.
Such approaches are now widely recognised as valid by academia, blue chips and so on (the bottom line really does concentrate the mind).
Agreed, there are few such people in the public sector. Much of the public sector just does not hire in this area at all. I had one public sector policy person, who shall remain nameless, ask me over a coffee recently whether this idea of users/user-centred design/user experience/usability was of any importance at all...and the experience at IPPR the other evening (see previous post) was dispiriting too. Though there are, to my knowledge, at least a few government agencies now interested in developing such know-how internally, as well as a number of others who have started to make inroads by contracting out certain aspects.
When you are out with people, looking at what they do and talking to them about what's important, they're very willing to help, and contribute immensely to final designs of products, software, websites, systems, services. It's just astonishing that so much work is still done without using this - often free - resource. And depressing when public sector people say that's all that's needed is more marketing.
Take a look at some research to be presented tomorrow at a conference, concerning the language of diabetes websites. If we don't fully take on board the language people themselves use and understand when talking about their condition, how can we hope to communicate?
Anyway, that's the end of the rant;-)
Ed Straw's piece on the end of gifted generalists in the civil service seems very timely. I'll read it with interest.
1:09 PM|
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