The world is in a constant state of change – sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. Many factors with complex relationships that are all connected in one way or another. Some we can’t easily see. It’s fragile. Rub one factor the wrong way in isolation of everything else, it can cause ripples and side affects. It can break things.
Designing to a series of constraints and boundaries within an organisation isn’t too different.
An effort should be made to be consciously aware of the environmental factors in which your design is going to sit beside within an overall service.
You’ll usually have the following factors, and maybe many more:
In a mature organisation, all of these factors will align and collaborate to meet the User's need.
The state of these factors in your org will determine the kind of you work you can expect to be working towards.
It’s all good work to be doing, but being aware is valuable and helps the team be more agile.
This isn’t always the case. In fact, rarely, sadly.
Producing a good design can be made difficult when the environmental factors don't align with their goals. You start to be pulled in different directions.
When you’re designing something, you should be designing with intent. You want to push for something. You want to change something. You want to remove something. Whatever the design does, it should always strive to be better than what currently exists. The design is the glue that keeps all of the factors happy.
There’s the other side to this, too.
A design can only be as good as its constraints. It’s environmental factors. It can’t be better.
A design is only as stable as the stability of its environmental factors.
An idea can go through a design process and meet the success criteria for all of the factors, which is great. Job done. Until factors change. A policy has changed. A business need has changed. A user need has changed or a new one has emerged through research. The design needs to react. Change. This is absolutely normal. Be aware. Be comfortable. Be accepting of this happening. Be aware of what might make a design no longer good enough or meet the need. An example could be something like this:
"The design has been researched and we believe implementing this will meet the need. The policy in which this design fits within is due for a review in 7 months time. We need to ensure we're made aware of the outcome of the policy review and what impact this could have on the design, it may need to be changed."
(There is a case to be made that design should be used as a tool to influence policy. This isn't as straight forward in some organisations and we'll keep that for another post).
This can be made challenging when a factor, for whatever reason, breaks off from the team of factors that had good chemistry, but it’s went off on its own. Trying to do something different to what the other factors have been aligning around. In these cases, design can become less about designing interactions for end users, but rather focussing efforts to internally facing org design. Discussions and workshops with stakeholders. Speaking to higher ups. Service design.
When the environment changes around the design that it was catering for, It’s important to understand the context of why a factor has changed and how the change may have came about. You might be designing to meet a newly identified user need. But where did it come from? Has the user need emerged as a reaction from a policy or business change that was not originally designed with users in mind? This is what I dub as ‘patch work’. You’re putting a plaster on top of a dirty plaster. Instead, carefully peel the original plaster back and heal the wound.
I'm currently reading my copy of Designing With And Within Public Organisations by André Schaminée. There's some really nice insights in here around designing within public orgs that have helped me see the bigger pictures sometimes and helped me better focus my efforts in certain areas.