1. Spot the difference
service designers and outcomes
focused practitioners and their role
in social innovation
September 14, 2012 1

2. Innovation in social services
• A decisive shift towards prevention
• Greater integration of public services
at a local level driven by better
partnership. Collaboration and
effective local delivery
• Greater investment in the people who
deliver services through enhanced
workforce development, effective
leadership
• A sharp focus on improving
performance though innovation and
use of digital technology
(Christie, 2011)
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3. Innovation at IRISS
Whether innovation is radical or incremental is
implies a real change in the way work is
done, using new knowledge organisational
forms, or processes to develop changes in the
way we deliver support to people.
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4. An outcomes focused approach
• Outcomes in a social care context
refers to the impacts or end results of
support in a person life
• Aims to shift the balance of power for
the professional to the service user
(Boyle et al. 2010)
• Benefits of approach found for
individuals staff and organisations
(Miller 2011)
• Innovative because provision of
support typically been led by available
resources rather than outcomes
people want to achieve
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5. A service design approach
• Holistic, multidisciplinary and integrative
approach where designers with different
expertise work with service stakeholder
(Bartlett et al. 2008)
• Aims to make services more
useful, usable, desirable for people and
effective and efficient for organisation
(Moritz 2005)
• Perceptions are challenged, change is
stimulated through process and products
which can change cultures (Burns et al.
2006)
• Innovative because collaborative
process, integrating across boundaries
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6. In our paper
• 3 different themes
• Many similarities and differences
• This presentation, 3 differences
– Incremental or radical social innovation
– Focus on the person but who generates the idea?
– Visualisation vs. conversation
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7. Difference
Incremental or radical social innovation
• Petts et al (2001) innovation and risk in social
services
• Mager (2006) high levels of uncertainty are
the hallmark of service design projects
• Process of iteration manages risk and supports
a focus on outcomes at each stage of design
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8. Questions
Incremental or radical social innovation
• Do we need to be radical to be innovative?
• How do can we support the social care sector
to embrace risk?
• Can service design approaches effectively
manage risk?
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9. Difference
Focus on the person but who generates the idea?
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10. Questions
Focus on the person but who generates the idea?
• Is the use of service designers democracy with
the designer facilitating?
• Is the designer first among equals, so
ultimately as responsible for the outcome as
the idea?
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11. Difference
Visualisation vs. conversation
• Skills and tools
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12. Questions
Visualisation vs. conversation
• How sustainable is the inclusion of visual
methods in service delivery and
development?
• How do we measure meaningful interactions
when including visual methods?
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13. More questions than answers?
• We think service design could be considered as a
complimentary asset (Tether 2008), that is it enhances the
value of an outcomes focused approach and is also enhanced
by the use of the approach
• Both could contribute to innovation by involving service
stakeholders in the design of services, leading to:
– Increased personalisation of services
– Wider and richer choices of ideas
– Lower cost by eliminating processes that users do not
value/are inefficient
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14. Thoughts…
• What can learn from others who are working
within public sector improvement field?
• What can we learn from others who are
appraising different social innovation
approaches?
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