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Test your assumptions: Validate assumptions made in Criterion 1 (‘Have a clear intent’). Conducting qualitative user research directly with people who may be impacted by your service, will provide you with either confirmation that you’re on the right track, or that you are solving the wrong problem and need to adapt your approach.

Gather different perspectives: Undertake ethical and inclusive user research to capture a breadth of needs and capabilities. Zoom out and consider how your digital service interacts with your agency’s wider methods of service delivery. It is helpful to zoom in and out of your problem space to observe the different perspectives and impacts of the service you are designing, and to explore how the problem may manifest at macro and micro levels.

Embed co-design: Where appropriate, use co-design to involve users and stakeholders, and demonstrate transparent, equitable decision making. Avoid tokenism by meeting people’s physical, cultural and psychological safety needs in your consultations. Maintain ongoing user engagement to keep your service fit for purpose and address changing needs over the course of people’s lives.

Engage designers: Ensure your team has the expertise to elicit and interpret useful information from users’ personal experiences. Use service designers and user experience (UX) designers to conduct user research, map experiences and design your service to meet and surpass the needs of all users.