The UK government's manual for designing and running public services: the Service Standard, guidance on discovery, alpha, beta and live, and on user research and service design.
The practical companion to service design, covering research, ideation, prototyping and implementation with a large method library. Widely used as a course text.
Government Social Research guidance on making research more inclusive: recruitment, adapted methods and attention to under-represented groups.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on informed, voluntary participation: participant information, consent records and the right to withdraw.
Department for Education user research guidance on gathering, confirming and recording consent, including checking that people still agree as a session goes on.
Nielsen Norman Group on what interviews can and cannot reveal, including fallible memory and rationalised accounts of past behaviour, and why they pair with observation.
Mapping what a person does, thinks and feels as they try to get something done across a service. Nielsen Norman Group's introduction covers the anatomy and the pitfalls.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on learning about user needs through existing evidence, interviews, observation and the people who support users.
A chapter in Doing Good Qualitative Research examining how power in the researcher and participant relationship shapes what is learned, and proposing a power-conscious approach.
Department for Education guidance on the ethics of researching colleagues: pressure to take part, voluntary participation, authority and confidentiality.
Department for Education guidance on research across languages: working with interpreters, cultural sensitivities and accessible consent materials.
UKRI and ESRC research ethics guidance on contextual vulnerability and actively given, informed consent, including the problem of passive or gatekeeper assent.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on reconstructing a service experience by exploring what people did, thought and felt over time.
An open collection of communication tools and methods for designing services, started by Roberta Tassi and maintained as a shared library.
The free online companion to the book: over fifty methods for research, ideation, prototyping and facilitation, each with a step-by-step description.
GOV.UK Service Manual guidance on planning and running interviews to understand people's circumstances, experiences, problems and needs.
Other topics
- Service blueprinting
- Journey mapping
- Discovery
- Stakeholder mapping
- Co-design
- Prototyping
- Public sector
- Health
- Systems thinking
- Systemic design
- Participatory design
- Design research
- Service organisations
- Professional practice
- Introductions
- Policy
- Futures
- Measurement
- Service standards
- Collaboration
- Education
- Power dynamics
- Agency and autonomy
- Design ethics
- Research ethics and consent
- Interviewing
- Memory and evaluation
- Dark patterns
- Culture and context
- Inclusion