The Journey to the Interface

From cleaning the streets to checkouts, from looking after our elderly parents to selling us holidays, more than 20 million people in the UK work in service. The ‘service economy’ now accounts for 72 per cent of our gross domestic product. Most of us work in service; all of us depend on it. But expansion of the service sector has not heralded a service revolution. Too often people’s experiences of service are alienating and frustrating.

Drawing on the principles and practices of the emerging discipline of ‘service design’, the recently published short book, The Journey to the Interface argues that the common challenge that all service organisations face is how to create more intimate and responsive relationships with their users and customers. Drawing on over 50 interviews with service innovators from the public, private and voluntary sectors, the book makes the case for a fresh approach to public service reform - an approach that is less about competition and contestability and more about closing the gap between what people want and need, and what service organisations do.

Service as a journey.

In the book we suggest how service design can offer policy-makers and practitioners a vision for the transformation of public services, as well as a route to get there. It outlines an agenda for action that spells out how service design approaches can be applied systemically.

Joe Heapy is a director of Engine
Sophia Parker is deputy director of Demos