Afreen Saulat

A round up of interesting resources relating to the development of a ‘Minimum Digital Living Standard’. 👇 • The main resource site with project updates from the Minimum Digital Living Standard (MDLS) Team - https://mdls.org.uk. • An overview of the ‘Minimum Digital Living Standard’ - https://lnkd.in/eNhhJGgm • A Minimum Digital Living Standard for UK Households in 2025: Full report from the Good Things Foundation - https://lnkd.in/etHvK5wB • Developing a minimum digital living standard for households with children - https://lnkd.in/e7amFncM - some of the earlier work in this space from the Loughborough University Centre for Research in Social Policy.

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🚨 New Book Alert 🚨 Access for All is out now! This is not a how-to guide on designing accessible products or services. It’s something deeper... the why. The book invites opportunities to close the widening gap between accessibility policy and actual delivery. Because good intentions aren’t enough. Because legislation isn’t implementation. Because stories from people with lived experience remind us what’s at stake. Access for All is a call to action: ✅ Prioritise accessibility. ✅ Make inclusion real. ✅ Lead with empathy, not just compliance. If you're a leader ready to make real change - take a look at this book. Read more and get your copy now! https://lnkd.in/e8bu62ee #Accessibility #Inclusion #Leadership #AccessForAll #InclusiveDesign #LivedExperience #BookLaunch

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𝗜𝗤𝗖𝗦 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽: 𝗥𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗨𝗞 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻? IQCS User Members are UK-based organisations of any size, including agencies, consultancies, insight teams, UX labs, academic units and other specialist facilities that outsource all or part of their market research data collection. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻? For smaller or independent consultancies that may not yet hold ISO 20252 certification themselves, IQCS User Membership delivers an immediate “badge of quality”. Internal and external clients and partners can see at a glance that every project is executed by suppliers who operate to the rigorous standards set out in the IQCS and ISO 20252. 𝗠𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀  • Full access to IQCS training materials, standards updates and member events  • Guidance on selecting and auditing fieldwork partners  • Networking with a community committed to excellence in interviewer-administered and mixed-mode research  • Use of the IQCS User Member logo on proposals, websites and reports 𝙅𝙤𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙥𝙪𝙩 𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝙦𝙪𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩, 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙨 𝙞𝙣-𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙄𝙌𝘾𝙎/𝙄𝙎𝙊-𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙙 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙨. Photo by Adeolu Eletu @adeolueletu https://lnkd.in/eHUxmeBW

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Questions I ask service teams during government service assessments. Even though it’s called an ‘assessment’ its really about supporting teams through various stages (discovery, alpha, beta, live). I’m a design assessor so most of my questions are about design and UX. Questions about scope 1. Do you have everything you need to create a service? Is there a profession missing? 2. Is there a content designer on the team? If no, why not? If yes, how is content created and managed? 3. How do you know you’ve got the scope of the service right? 4. How do you know a service is the best way to solve the problem? Did you consider anything else? 5. What challenges/constraints are you facing and what’s the impact (might be funding, tech, people etc)? 6. How will users find the service initially (from GOV.UK or the NHS)? Design questions 1. Talk me through some design iterations you tested and explain why you rejected them 2. Have you reused components, patterns or journeys from the design system? 3. Did you create bespoke components or patterns. If so, why? And how will you share these for other teams to reuse? 4. How will the offline part of the service work and how well does the online service join up with the offline part? 5. What are you doing to make sure users don’t have to supply the same information multiple times? 6. How does design work happen? What’s the workflow like? How do you make sure you don’t take on too much work? Accessibility questions 1. How has the service been designed to meet Gov accessibility standards? 2. Explain how you know users will succeed first time and if they don’t, what is the support route? 3. Can you show me how this service works with assisted technology? 4. Can you show me your accessibility statement and talk about any unsolved issues? (If there is one) 5. How have you considered accessibility from the start? These are just a handful of questions. Sharing because these questions can be applied to any team in any organisation. Hope they are useful.

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💡 Every so often I delve back into the gov.uk archives for old blog posts 🔦 ... one of the best parts of digital gov is how many reusable and practical posts have been shared over the past 15 years or so… This is a great post about the work needed to make vision/mission/strategy statements measurable. It's a nice simple framework from Ryan Thomas Hewitt★CSM★CSPO★ITIL who I worked with at DWP …I still come back to this approach when thinking about KPIs or goals. It can be extended by adding descriptions to keywords/phrases from any strategy or vision document. This also works well adapted into a workshop format (I've done this many times now). It works with a product vision/goals, or for a service strategy focus - you can just broaden the types of measures you think about. #digitaltransformation https://lnkd.in/dh3uDDa

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Webinar Announcement Creating Effective Design and Activation Teams UC Health Standards in Design – Part 1 February 12 11:00 AM Eastern Time This panel explores three models for building effective design and activation teams in healthcare projects: • Internal teams • Consultant-driven teams • Hybrid approaches We’ll dive into real-world examples from UCHealth, Healthcare Building Solutions, and Denver Health—highlighting the benefits, drawbacks, and lessons learned from each model. The discussion will also cover key threshold factors such as technical complexity, available resources, and project timelines that help determine which approach is the best fit. Speakers: Kaycee Shiskowsky, Manager of Clinical Planning and Design, UCHealth Jennifer Winlaw (Rottler), Director of Facility Activation, UCHealth Amber Miller, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, CHFM, VP Transition Planning, Healthcare Building Solutions John J White, AIA, ACHA Associate COO, Denver Health Register here: https://luma.com/zp6vmfwp

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Weeknotes for last week include notes on prototyping with real data, vaccination histories, and some updates to the NHS design system and prototype kit. https://lnkd.in/eVmQEzHs

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Designing GOV.UK services is never just about designing a service. It is about navigating a complex ecosystem of people, policies and platforms. Service designers working in government face a unique set of challenges. We’re often tasked with shaping journeys that must work across legacy systems, organisational silos and overlapping programmes—all while meeting the GOV.UK Service Standard, accessibility requirements and policy constraints. The real challenge is rarely the design work itself. It is the environment in which the work must happen. Many teams struggle because senior leaders have had limited exposure to large-scale digital transformation. Objectives become misaligned; departmental ambitions compete; self-preservation creeps in. These are human behaviours, not failures—but they can easily derail delivery. This is why we must evolve our approach. GDS standards give us a strong foundation, yet designing platform and shared services requires an adaptable and systemic mindset. We must balance rigour with flexibility; meet teams where they are; work across domains rather than within them. Above all, we must help leaders see the bigger picture—because no service exists in isolation. A systems-thinking approach allows us to show how services connect, where value flows, and where unintended consequences will surface. It helps us reveal the true costs of fragmentation and the benefits of alignment. And crucially, it enables us to demonstrate value early, often and in ways that resonate with decision-makers. If we want GOV.UK services to be simpler, faster and more accessible, we need more than good research and design. We need adaptable practices, shared understanding and leadership willing to think in systems—not silos. Here are five takeaways to help teams adopt a more adaptable, systems-led approach: 1. Frame services as part of an ecosystem; show leaders how decisions ripple across policies, platforms and user journeys. 2. Design for re-use, not reinvention; shared components, patterns and workflows reduce duplication and accelerate delivery. 3. Co-create with the whole system; bring policy, operations, technology and front-line roles into the room early, not just at checkpoints. 4. Make value visible; use simple artefacts—service maps, cost models, volumetrics—to help decision-makers see why alignment matters. 5. Build adaptive practices; tailor methods to programme maturity while staying anchored in the GOV.UK Service Standard and accessibility principles. All views my own #servicedesign #govuk #systemsthinking #digitaltransformation #designleadership

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Systems thinking is an essential approach in research and design projects these days – particularly within organisations such as the NHS. It can help us better understand the interconnectedness of the services we’re trying to improve, it can help us understand leverage points and unintended consequences in collaborative ways. Systems thinking is one of my favourite activities as a service designer, therefore, I’m feeling particularly lucky this week to be able to moderate this webinar – we have a fantastic line-up. Come and see for yourself! 

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Sometimes user needs aren’t that useful. I’ve written a design history about the lessons we learned while conducting and analysing research for a new digital service for the NHS lung cancer screening programme: https://lnkd.in/eeCJFWiu During this research, we learned that experiences around screening don’t always fit neatly into “As a user, I need X so that Y.” • Some of the most important insights weren’t ‘needs’, but emotions, expectations and previous experiences • Talking about smoking history can be deeply emotional. People talked about feeling fearful when they saw the words “lung cancer”, and shame when talking about their smoking experiences • Many expected a result at the end. When they don’t get one (which will be the case in our early pilot), this can cause them to lose trust in the service. Trying to compress all of this into user needs meant that we risked losing important nuance, so we used a different approach. Inspired by Will Myddelton’s UX Brighton talk from 2018, we looked at 7 lenses of experience: goals, behaviours, emotions, mental models, pain points, contexts and tasks. What changed for us: • We kept the richness of what people told us • We made our insights more digestible for a multidisciplinary team and our stakeholders • Most importantly, our research was able to inform decision-making by taking into account more of the nuance and complexity that makes up a person’s experience when using our service Key takeaway: If you work in potentially emotive spaces, look beyond user needs. Some of the most important insights about how people experience your service sit outside of user needs, in the broad spectrum of what people feel, expect and bring with them.

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Reposting this from Mike Rose 👇 February’s session was a strong one. Plenty of useful challenge, plenty of useful questions and no shortage of opinions (exactly as it should be). A big focus for me right now is making the specs easier to interrogate and challenge, not just publish. That’s why I’ve started work on the specification explorer (very early stages) Mike links to above: to help people trace a clear thread from need -> implementation -> justification and challenge us where needed. It’s also becoming clear that the “decision-stage” label is now causing more confusion than clarity. We’re looking at more than final outputs. The in-between process (validation, consultation, amendments, timeline events) is where a lot of the real value is created. Onward to the 31 March session

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NEW: Free User Research in Government Training 🎉 We’ve created a new, free training programme to help people develop user research skills across central and local government and the NHS. The programme includes 3 courses. Each one supports a different level of experience and can be completed independently. 📘 Training courses 1. User Research in Government: Getting Started For people who are new to user research or want to understand how agile teams work. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eieWZg_H 2. User Research in Government: Developing Further For people starting their first user research role or working with a user researcher. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ezV23Rvs 3. User Research in Government: for Practitioners A facilitated cohort for people who want to deepen their practice. 📩 Contact us to join the waiting list. 💡 Why we created this programme We heard consistent needs across organisations: - people entering user research roles without training - teams unsure how to work effectively with user researchers - experienced researchers seeking structured development - academics wanting to learn more efficient and effective methods The programme aims to build capability and capacity to support ethical, inclusive and evidence-based service design. 🤝 How we developed it Built by a brilliant cross-gov team. Powered by more than 60 volunteers. Pilots in Leeds, London, Bristol and Newcastle helped us improve content, accessibility and delivery. 🔜 What’s next Over the next year we will: - continue iterating the courses - expand practitioner-level facilitated cohorts - offer additional train the facilitator courses 🚀 How to take part Use the links above to access the first two courses, or contact us to join the practitioner course waiting list. Learn from amazing user researchers such as Sarah Stokes, Louise Petre, Lianne Bailey, Natalie Baron, Tilly G. Dr Sarah Thew, Amy Everett and Marianthi Vezertzi and many more!" #UserResearch #ServiceDesign #LearningAndDevelopment #QualitativeResearch Aire Logic Limited

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Just taken a read through the UK Gov's new People Factor framework & Hidden Risks Toolkit for the safe implementation of Gen AI in public services. It's a set of 9 tips for leaders that are 'critical to success' based on 3 stages of 'adopt', 'sustain', and 'optimise'. The framework & toolkit are informed by the deployment and evaluation of a Gen AI tool, 'Assist', across over 200 government organisations.   The Hidden Risk Toolkit is especially interesting to me because it steers away from the common narratives of risks from technical limitations or intentional misuse of AI, and instead focuses on the hidden risks resulting from well-intentioned use of AI by people, teams, and organisations. These risks are low salience & harder to anticipate, but have huge potential impacts; the 'unknown unknowns' (for those familiar with Rumsfeld's matrix). Things like task-tool mismatch, over or under-reliance on AI outputs, and QA gaps all form part of these risks that, at least in digital health, pose a genuine risk to people's safety & care quality down the line. I like the issues being framed this way because it acknowledges the balance of humans using AI as the key drivers for change, but also therefore at risk of succumbing to pitfalls.   A valuable starting point for any team looking to scale Gen AI safely and responsibly 👍 #AIethics #ScalableAI #Publicservice https://lnkd.in/ePRjDPWb

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The Design Council has updated its Systemic Design Framework to help designers working on complex challenges that involve people across different disciplines and sectors. Here it is: https://lnkd.in/eKC5ukwM What is systemic design? Systemic design is the acknowledgment of complexity and interconnectedness throughout the design thinking and doing process. It is both a mindset and a methodology - considering the structures and beliefs that underpin a challenge.

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We've just put out an RFI for design research tooling at the BBC and I wanted to share it here in case it's relevant to you or someone you know. https://lnkd.in/eM3wphTs We're looking to consolidate our research tooling, bringing moderated and unmoderated methods into one place, with better support for insight storage and reuse as we move towards continuous discovery. We're particularly interested in platforms that support: - Mixed methods research - Quality participant recruitment - Responsible self-serve for teams This is tooling only, not an agency or service model. We want something we can genuinely grow with as our ways of working evolve. If that sounds like your platform, we'd love to hear from you. 🚀

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