As the Lead Service Designer with the Office of Design & Delivery, my role was pivotal in reshaping and enhancing the City of Austins experiences. I functioned as both a proficient practitioner and an educator, spearheading the adoption of innovative methodologies that transcended departmental silos. My mission encompassed not only refining existing processes but also imparting invaluable guidance and training to both the public and city personnel. Moreover, service design helped in forming relationships by aligning internal service provisions with frontstage personnel, ensuring consistent information availability across all customer touchpoints. In essence, I acted as a mediator and communicator, balancing multiple needs while strategizing, interviewing, and facilitating.

Embracing a systematic approach, our team engaged in a comprehensive service design process.This process not only streamlined citizen (Customer)-facing outputs but also addressed internal processes often overlooked in cities and organizations. By surfacing conflicts between business models and service-design models, service design triggered thoughtful discussions, providing context around multiple linking systems for comprehensive service delivery. This approach fostered hard conversations, enabling collaborative and cross-functional solutions while reducing redundancies with a bird’s-eye view of internal service processes.

From streamlining Austin's permitting procedures to catalyzing behavioral shifts in police oversight, we navigated complex challenges with strategic foresight and creative problem-solving. Central to our endeavors was the cultivation of city-wide standards, sustainable, secure and private web development, and protection of user research. By establishing robust frameworks and best practices, we fostered a culture of innovation and efficiency across municipal departments, operations and systems. Our portfolio reflects a journey of transformation, showcasing not only the outcomes of our endeavors but also the collaborative spirit and dedication to service excellence that underpinned every project.

From initial ideation to final implementation, our process was characterized by adaptability, collaboration, and a relentless pursuit of user-centric solutions. Our portfolio encapsulates not just the projects undertaken, but the power of service design as a catalyst for positive change and a driver of citizen and employee-centric innovation within the urban landscape.

Key deliverables

1. Discovery Research Reports: Comprehensive analyses illuminating pain points, user needs, and strategic insights to inform design direction.

2. Service Design Research Interviews: Conducting stakeholder and user interviews to gather insights into organizational goals, constraints, and user perspectives. Distinguishing between front-end (user-facing) and back-end (organizational) aspects.

3. Service Blueprints: Visual representations mapping out the end-to-end user journey, service touchpoints, and internal processes, distinguishing between frontstage and backstage components. Frontstage components encompass channels, products, touchpoints, and interfaces experienced by users, while backstage components include policies, technology, infrastructures, and systems behind the scenes.

4. Prototypes and Mockups: Tangible representations of proposed solutions, tailored to address different touchpoints and needs across digital environments and physical spaces, facilitating iterative testing and refinement.

5. Facilitation of Service Design Workshops: From discovery to ideation, organizing and leading workshops to facilitate collaborative exploration of user needs, brainstorming of ideas, and prioritization of solutions. Workshops may include activities such as empathy mapping, journey mapping, brainstorming sessions, prototyping exercises, and feedback sessions with stakeholders and users.

6. Training Materials: Curated resources and workshops empowering city staff with the tools and knowledge to implement service design principles effectively.

7. City-wide Standards Documentation: Robust guidelines and frameworks establishing benchmarks for service excellence and consistency across departments.