Louise Downe
Head of design
UK government
London, UK
Louise is a designer, thinker and maker who spends her time identifying patterns in human behaviour and making things to fit. She regularly speaks and writes about that theme. In addition, she is a published art historian, and has exhibited work at MoMA.
Louise has been involved in the creation of new financial services, rethinking broadcasting and health. She is now a government advisor on technology at Gov.uk, which is praised for its innovative approach to online public services.Gov.uk has very strong citizen-first approach, which inspires many other governments such as USA, Australia or Switzerland.
We are impressed by gov.uk work and Louise specific involvement in the enterprise. Following her story we are looking forward to hear what she has learned on the way, and how she brings new energy to this work.
Case Study:
Redesigning Government for the 21st Century
Friday | 15:50 – 16:35
How to move away from a “transaction after transaction” behavior to create the right services
In United kingdom, providing services to individuals and businesses, makes up 80% of the cost of government. Of this 80%, up to 60% is spent on the cost of service failure. This money is spent dealing with the fall out of millions of applications, renewals, and revocations made by users who aren’t eligible, don’t actually need to do a thing, or do so in the wrong way. This is not ‘user error’: service failure could be avoided by better designed services. But how to make sure to meet the needs of users? And how to scale user centred design in the UK’s largest single organisation?
In her talk, Louise will explain how to move away from a “transaction after transaction” behavior to create the right services.
What you will learn
- How service design is applied in the UK government.
- How to transform highly political organisations.
Who is this talk for
- People who are interested in design at scale.
