Skills Development Scotland

Snook believes that designers should be in government. Sarah is being sponsored by Skills Development Scotland, who were created by the Scottish Government and are a non-departmental public body, so they're accountable to Scottish Ministers. Sarah's aim is to help their Service Design and Innovation Directorate understand the design process. She is leading them through a process of change to put design thinking at the heart of their organisation.In building the capabilities of staff to practice innovation, she hopes to empower staff to change things from the ground up.

Over the course of the coming year, Sarah will look at how design thinking can be used as a vehicle to drive innovation in the public sector.  The idea is to disseminate the service design process and participatory and ethnographic techniques associated with it to put these in the hands of frontline staff and enable their capabilities to see their services through the eyes of user, promoting a more human-centred approach to improving their services.  

In simple terms, it’s about putting people over process. Sarah is questioning the organisational structure to look at how frontline staff can be handed autonomy and can be motivated to achieve innovation both locally and nationally.  The project will involve a feedback system within the organisation that will manifest in both online and offline formats to enable staff to collectively work together to share best practice and solve problems together by engaging with the public and one another.

The most difficult part is the training.  Breaking down the DNA of a designer is no easy task, and it involves leading people through new ways of seeing the services they offer and the systems they operate within.  It looks at new ways of being and adopting an open mind and self motivation to undertake practices away from the current norm.
Watch this space.