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.