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Originally posted on Ghost as Weeknote, July 11: Human-Centered Governance and learning about city service processes.

Work things

So lucky I got to try this firsthand (Thank you, R., for the opportunity).

The first third of my career was about understanding people. And, why they buy.

The second third was around understanding people and how the web works, and structuring the web to match how people understand.

The latest third – which, is the trickiest – is understanding people, and how they’re organized, and making sure the system we structured works within the larger “people” system (and not just the “tech” definition system).

I wrote about it here – what I learned going from UX to Service Design, basically, and what I would do differently.

I’ve worked with Legal and Policy teams with really no consideration for customers and readers, more of the classic corporate protection mandate – which is completely understandable.

I also got to work with governance people who came from a consultancy background, with more of an emphasis on “structure” and process compliance.  Which, I guess, is the core of governance – beyond legal protection.

So, it was very refreshing to get a client brief specifically for customer-centric governance, that led with customer research ❤️

Life things

1. I got to meet L., who is working in service innovation in the city government.  I learned things like:

• Institutional roles are subject-matter-expertise -focused (This was very similar to banking): I should not talk about “design”, and instead map it to what the operations and business people care about.
• Being clear about what the role’s core tasks are, and whether you’re capable of them. 

2. Learned about doing address changes and school registration in the City of Vancouver (relative to the City of Surrey).