15 principles of Good Service Design

1. Be easy to find

The service must be able to be found by a user with no prior knowledge of the task they set out to do. For example, someone who wants to ‘learn to drive’ must be able to find their way to ‘get a driving licence’ as part of that service unaided.

What this means in practice

The name of the service should describe the task a user would recognise that they're trying to achieve. It should not contain legal or technical language, the name of a technology or acronyms

You’ve achieved this when

A user can find your service unaided by looking to complete the task they set out to do

How to do it

When it comes to finding your service, nothing is more important than its name. The name should reflect what users are trying to do and use words that your users will understand

Ask yourself:

• What does your user want to achieve? 

• What is your user likely to search for to find your service?

• How knowledgeable are they about what services might be available to help them achieve their end goal? How does this affect what they might look for?