15 principles of Good Service Design

4. Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do

A good service helps the user to achieve a goal – be that start a business, learn to drive or move house – in as much of a seamless stream of events as possible. This starts from the moment that a user is considering doing something to the moment they have achieved their goal, including any steps needed to support the user after they have reached their goal

What this means in practice

The service enables a user to achieve the goal they set out to achieve as one, seamless string of events, and does not require the user to piece together their own pathway through a set of separated complex tasks or interactions

You’ve achieved good when

A user can achieve the outcome they set out to do without having to use multiple disjointed services and interactions to do so

How to do it

Remember: your user defines what a service is by what it is they want to achieve. The way they think and talk about your service is likely to be different to the way that you do.

Research the full end to end process a user needs to go through to achieve their goal. If other organisations deliver parts of this process, get a good understanding of these organisations, and any issues in the way they deliver their parts of the service:

• Look at how data gets shared between the organisations delivering this service – are there things you could share that would make it easier for your user? Or things that you need from those organisations that would enable you to provide a better part of this service?

• Look at your organisation’s ability to deliver the whole service – if this isn’t feasible, define what a rational scope for your part of that end-to-end service will be.

• Consider which part of the service it makes sense to deliver first. Just because you’ve decided to deliver an end-to-end service doesn’t mean you need to deliver it all at once. Start small and build or improve in increments