Cultivating kindness
How might Service Design foster kindness in public services?
Service design | Public Services | Master thesis | Team work | 6 monthsUsecase
For our Master thesis, we posed the question of whether kindness could offer an alternative way of increasing relationality and thus citizen trust towards governments. Having conducted in-depth research about kindness in the public sector, we asked ouselves how we could integrate kindness into design processes to develop a more individualised and empathetic public service sector.
Project strategySurvey • Expert interviews • Ideation Workshops • Tool Development • Prototyping • Testing
Process
The thesis process started with an extensive literature review to understand the current academic landscape around kindness and service design. After having identified some knowledge gaps and contradictory statements, we decided to conduct
a survey with citizens to understand the societal definition of kindness in the public service sector.
7 expert interviews to validate or falsify some hypothesis and gain additional knowledge from different discipline.
After analysing and contextualising all the insights, we framed a new working definition of kindness in services as a foundation to build on top of during the remaining process.
After conducting the survey and the expert interviews, we facilitated two ideation workshops with Service Designers to co-creatively come up with ideas on how to integrate kindness into a Design process. The outcomes were used to prototype, test and further develop the ideas into concrete concepts of a toolkit for service designers to use in their day-to-day work long their established design methods.
The advanced concepts were then tested in different settings with Service Designers using specific usecases to realistically evaluate the efficicay and appropriateness of the developed solution. After four iterations and rigourous elaboration, the tools were finalised and a guidebook was developed.
Result
The Kindness Toolkit consists of three distinct and versatile tools that aim to shift the focus towards kindness within Service Design processes. The goal is to create awareness and a foundation for the implementation of kindness and make the abstract concept tangible and actionable. This approach seeks to address the previously overlooked opportunities in designing relational connections by placing a greater emphasis on human-to-human interactions in the service development. Through the testing with participants as well as on an existing service, the individual tools were adapted to the needs and routines of Service Designers. The solution serves as a flexible framework that can be adapted to any type of design process.
The Kindness Toolkit aims to help Service Designers to:
Analyse and integrate a mindset of kindness in public services.
Work towards a change from predominantly rational services to relational services.
Consider human-to-human interactions to a greater extent in design and decision-making processes.
