Design interventions in the public sector: An analysis of public services through two course collaborations at Aalto University

Abstract

Governments all over the world are facing difficult problems due to globalisation, migration, changes in healthcare and education, among others. Such large-scale problems require innovative approaches to come to desired solutions. Service design has been an emerging field to potentially tackle such large-scale societal problems thanks to its human-centred approach and systems thinking.

This thesis focuses on the evolution of service design in public services in Finland. The thesis is commissioned by Aalto University Department of Design and the research investigates two Academia-Industry collaboration projects between Aalto University and Finnish public sector. Master level courses organised by the Department of Design at the Aalto ARTS school: Designing for Services and Design for Government, have run for the past decade and our aim was to research the evolution of service design through industry project briefs and the proposed solutions by students through these courses.

We identified that the final student reports from the courses had the most detailed information about the design interventions and decided to focus on the reports as the main research object. After analysing 100 student reports from the past decade, numerous insights emerged. These insights were grouped into 4 categories. Focus was understanding on what the proposed outputs and outcomes of design are, for whom these interventions were meant for and what the general project topics have been over time.

The main insights of the research help us see that most service design interventions are meant for multi-stakeholder groups focusing on collaboration, behavioural change and improved services and most interventions use either strategic resources or digital tools to reach the desired outcome.

The tangible result of the thesis is the illustration and examples of the intervention outcomes and outputs, which can be helpful when planning similar project collaborations with courses in the future and guiding students towards their solutions.