Course tickets are now available directly via good.services

Making the Case for Service Design is an intensive one-day masterclass that will give you the skills and tools to communicate the value of user-centred change and build a compelling financial business case

Who it’s for

This course is for user-centred design practitioners and change-makers looking to gain the skills and confidence in financial and risk analysis needed to prove the value of user-centred change in their organisations or the organisations they work with

What you’ll learn

Identify the areas of unnecessary cost and risk being generated by bad service design in your service and organisation
Understand how this compares to other organisations and typical patterns of cost and risk within public and private sector services
Build the skills needed to put a price on bad service design, and identify the cost of improving it to create a compelling cost-benefit analysis for user-centred change
Understand how to build or improve the business model of your service to support user-centric change
Understand how to navigate the mechanisms of financial approval and case-making in the public and private sector
Construct a compelling financial and risk-based case for change

Course modules

1. Introduction to service economics

Understand how money and risk influence the design and development of services
Identify the areas of unnecessary cost and risk being generated by bad service design in your service and organisation
Understand how this compares to other organisations and typical patterns of cost and risk within public and private sector services

2. Mapping your business model

Understand the components of a business model of public and private setor services and how different types of business models affect services
Understand the existing financial / business model of your service and what success looks like
Understand how to build or improve the business model of your service to support user-centric change

3. Understanding business cases

Understand the key elements of a business case, from costs, to risks and outcomes
Learn which of these is most important based on your stakeholders and business model
Formulate a plan for creating a case for your business or organisation

4. Identifying unnecessary costs and risks in your service

Understand key concepts of financial service planning
Understand types of costs that affect your service - from overhead costs and opportunity cost to capital costs
Identify financial problems in your service, opportunity areas and risks when meeting outcomes
Calculate how much your service costs to run and calculate the cost of service failure
Quantitatively map user or societal outcomes
Reviewing the costs and risks of your service to identify areas where a case for change can be created

5. Calculating the cost of change

Calculate the time, effort and cost of change to your service
Learn how to calculate benefit-cost ratio of change
Create a benefit-cost ratio statement

6. Understanding risks assumptions & contingency planning

Understand the assumptions in your proposal for change and identify the risks of this work
Understand how to quantify the risk of change
Learn how to avoid, transfer or mitigate different types of service development risk
Create a risk register that accurately communicates your progress to your stakeholders

7. Making the case for change

Understand how to nevaigate the mechanisms of financial aproval and case making in the public and private sector
Understand the different routes to permission within your organisation
Create a clear pathway for approval for your change

How it works

All classes are delivered live and online in small classes that are a mix of taught tuition, individual exercises, and group discussion.

Participants work on a service or case study of their choice so all course takeaways are able to be put into action immediately

Your trainers

Lou Downe is author of the bestselling book about how to design services that work - Good Services.

They founded the discipline of service design in the UK government, where they were national Design Director for 5 years - establishing the Government’s Service Standard and Design System and building a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers - one of (if not the) largest design teams in the world.

Lou was nominated as one of the top 50 creative leaders in the UK in 2016 and one of the world's 100 most influential leaders in digital government in 2018 and is a passionate believer in the role of design to create a world which benefits everyone.

Private courses

This masterclass can be delivered privately for your organisation. Drop us a line here to discuss.

Making the Case for Service Design (£430 + VAT)