Using human-centered design to improve public service experiences

With the public sector increasingly focused on enhancing the user experience, many agencies are looking to leverage human-centered design principles to design services with constituents in mind. But while the approach is growing in popularity, successful implementation remains a challenge, as it requires government entities to engage their constituents in an entirely new way.

Government agencies, forced to navigate layers of policy and regulations accumulated over the decades, often use a waterfall approach, ensuring that a product or service is 100% complete before offering it to the public. This approach is great if you are trying to adhere to a rigid interpretation of a policy or regulation, but not great if you are trying to create a service or product based on a user’s lived experiences.

By contrast, human-centered design puts people impacted by the design of a product or service at the center of the discovery, design and creation process. Through this lens, agencies can reimagine their processes, cut through bureaucratic inertia and design services that genuinely meet the needs of the communities they serve.

Consider, for example, the streamlining of a government benefits application process — a process that historically requires hours of tedious paperwork on the part of applicants. 

By using an human-centered design approach to engage directly with constituents and test prototypes, a government think tank reduced the process to just seven minutes, significantly improving accessibility and satisfaction. When government agencies commit to listening and iterating, human-centered design can transform how they serve their constituents.

The Five Phases of Human-Centered Design

Human-centered design begins with an acknowledgment that constituents are experts in their own experiences. It emphasizes curiosity, empathy and collaboration, enabling governments to move beyond assumptions and stereotypes. 

Unlike traditional top-down approaches, human-centered design calls for iterative co-creation with the people the services are intended to benefit.

As such, the approach is aligned with the general ethos of the public sector, which revolves around serving the public good and fostering the well-being of communities. Empathy and understanding of the community’s struggles are key values, and agencies are driven by mission-oriented employees who have a passion to drive social impact in their community.

The public sector’s risk-averse culture, however, can present obstacles to adopting human-centered design. Wary of public scrutiny, resource constraints and potential lawsuits, many agencies operate under a culture of fear. Balancing these tensions requires a thoughtful and courageous approach — one that prioritizes a bias toward action and iterative learning.

The human-centered design framework offers a solution structured in five key phases:

1. Prepare: Effective human-centered design starts with introspection—the process of identifying our own lens through which we see the world, including biases and assumptions that might influence design outcomes. For public agencies, this could mean understanding historical budget priorities or recognizing underserved populations. Outputs include aligning on the initial strategy to test during the discovery phase.

Put it into action: Facilitate workshops to uncover team assumptions and align stakeholders on shared objectives — before engaging with users.                                                                                                                                         

2. Discover: This phase is all about building empathy with the community — gathering insights directly from users and understanding what their priorities and pain points are with a product or service.  Outputs include user personas and raw data from user interviews, observations, and surveys.

Put it into action: Public agencies often excel at listening to the community through interviews, and it’s important to double-down on these activities. Ensure that you are using a variety of engagement methods, such as virtual sessions and in-person events, to reach different segments of the community, including historically marginalized groups.

3. Define: By synthesizing insights from the discovery phase, teams can identify the most critical opportunities for design. This step requires collaborative decision-making to ensure that priorities reflect both constituent needs and the organization’s capacity. Outputs include problem statements, journey maps, user stories, and user requirements ranked by importance.

Put it into action: The public sector often plans in three- to five-year increments, but a long-term focus can inhibit the iteration that’s so critical to human-centered design. Ensure that plans and priorities can evolve as the agency’s understanding of the user experience does.

4. Design and develop: In this phase, teams brainstorm and prototype solutions, fostering divergent thinking before converging on viable concepts. Iterative testing with real users ensures that the final product aligns with constituent needs while remaining feasible. Outputs include low- and high-fidelity prototypes, usability testing reports, revised user flows, and more.

Put it into action: The design phase is often where the public sector gets stuck — agencies do a lot of talking to the community, but the challenge is to put the insights gained into action. Instead of saying, “This is the solution to the problem,” be brave enough to ask: “How can we solve this problem?” Ensure that user input is influencing solutions and that users understand that it’s worth their time to provide feedback.

5. Deliver: Unlike traditional waterfall approaches, human-centered design emphasizes phased delivery and continuous feedback. Iterating on solutions after rollout ensures that services evolve alongside user needs. Outputs include data collection, training materials, and post-launch feedback.

Put it into action: Build feedback loops into the delivery process, using surveys, focus groups, and analytics to assess impact and inform future iterations.  Celebrate iteration and normalize testing and refining as integral parts of the design process rather than signs of failure.

The Path Forward: Designing for Impact

In a world where constituents expect seamless, user-centered experiences, human-centered design offers a way to reimagine public service delivery. While it does require a change in mindset, it doesn’t require a complete overhaul of how an agency works. 

There are many activities and deliverables that can be used in isolation — without adopting the human-centered design framework in its entirety — to improve your agency’s understanding of the user experience. 

Create a brainstorming activity, or simply have some fun prototyping a few ideas. All that’s really needed is to embrace the letter C! Curiosity, courage, collaboration, creativity, caring.

Allison Torpey is managing director in Propeller’s Denver office. She has over 15 years of experience working in growth-focused roles across business and people strategy, program and project leadership, and change management for a variety of industries, including public sector, healthcare, consumer products and retail, and energy and utilities.

Rose Barcklow is a managing consultant at Propeller, a management consultancy that helps leading organizations thrive in change. With 15 years of design thinking and program management experience in the public sector, Rose is committed to continuous improvement, strategy and innovation for social impact.