Building user centred design capability with local government

Why Lancashire County Council wanted to work in a new way

In 2023, we worked with Lancashire County Council to build foundational skills and knowledge in user centred approaches and new ways of working. The Council aimed to develop team skills and confidence while demonstrating the impact of working in new ways.

Guiding teams through a hands-on user centred design journey

 As part of the ongoing delivery of Digital Transformation priorities, we demonstrated how user centred approaches could be applied, adapting our knowledge sharing and learning approaches to suit the needs of the Council.

Introducing a clear methodology for user centred design 

We began by providing the Council’s Change and Improvement team with an in-depth introduction to User Centred Design (UCD), covering our eight core methods:

• problem framing
• assumptions and hypotheses
• user research
• mapping user journeys and experiences 
• product prototyping
• service prototyping
• exploring business change
• service blueprinting

This initial phase allowed us to baseline the team's knowledge, address any questions or concerns and establish how we would work together.

Following a review of existing digital principles, we created a foundational set of service design principles for the team. These principles were refined in collaboration over 3 months to ensure they could be adopted, communicated and integrated into new ways of working. 

The introduction of UCD methods, along with our service design principles, formed the basis of a new ‘playbook’. This was built in collaboration with the Change and Improvement team and created so it could be used going forward to support new ways of working with wider Council programmes.

Building and embedding new design capabilities

Our goal in capability building is always to develop skills and share our experience in ways that teams will have the confidence and knowledge to be able to work independently in the future. 

To do this in Lancashire it was essential that we effectively supported the knowledge transfer of our UCD methods. We adopted a blended learning approach, with Council team members working alongside TPXimpact specialists to plan and run workshops, map user journeys, and facilitate resident interviews.

We then put in place supporting activities to support this learning:

1. Informal skills assessments 

We ran informal skills assessments, asking the team to rate their confidence in each of our core UCD methods out of 5, and provide a brief explanation. This allowed us to tailor our approach and identify which subjects we needed to dive deeper into. 

2. Lunch and Learn sessions 

We ran a series of ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions, featuring 30-minute presentations followed by plenty of time for questions. We opened these sessions up to a wider audience from across the Council, building understanding and support for UCD.

3. Practical sessions to build hands-on experience

To complement Lunch and Learn sessions, we ensured the Council team were getting enough hands-on experience with the methods we were using. Already working as blended teams, we ran additional training sessions on synthesising research findings into insights and developing ‘how might we’ statements for ideation and design work.

4. Buddy system

To further support capability building we implemented a buddy system, pairing Council staff with TPXimpact specialists. Pairs had informal weekly meetings to discuss learning, address questions, and to recommend further reading or support to expand their knowledge.

Transforming Skills and Confidence in Just Three Months

At the end of the three-month collaboration, we ran a final session with the Change and Improvement team, giving everyone the opportunity to reflect on their learning journey and to reassess their confidence levels in each of our UCD methods. All team members reported increased confidence across all areas.

The approach we took developed strong relationships with the team, creating a psychologically safe environment for people to challenge each other, collaborate and to try new ways of working. 

The playbook and service design principles we established have created a strong foundation for the Council team to confidently apply new skills and knowledge in user centred approaches, ultimately improving ways of working and creating real impact for the people that use Council services.

Our work with Lancashire County Council is just one example of how TPXimpact helps organisations build confidence and capability in user centred design.

• Read Lancashire County Council’s feedback - See how the team rated their learning experience and the measurable impact of our three-month collaboration.

• Discover our capability-building approach -  Learn how we help organisations embed new ways of working and measure skills and confidence growth.