There are literally hundreds of life events that require Victorian citizens to transact with the public service.

Each has the potential to make their life more difficult than it should be and often when they need it least. With so many government departments, it can be confusing and bewildering to even decide where to begin.

The Victorian Government asked our team to explore the attitudes, needs and service preferences of Victorian citizens—we were to create two trial service centres—one in Melbourne city and another in Shepparton, a major regional town in Victoria.

Many governments around the world are transitioning to a 'digital first' service model, providing a great online experience that can scale cheaply and provide a great experience for citizens. The Victorian Government were also keen to understand the needs of those who might need more support—such as the elderly, citizens with disability or recent migrants.

Each centre needed to capture feedback on what Victorians were thinking, doing and saying when completing a transaction; anything from booking a marriage ceremony to requesting a death certificate or updating a drivers licence.

Many governments around the world are transitioning to a 'digital first' service model, providing a great online experience that can scale cheaply and provide a great experience for citizens. The Victorian Government were also keen to understand the needs of those who might need more support—such as the elderly, citizens with disability or recent migrants.

By observing the ways citizens completed these transactions, we could explore the reasons why they succeeded or failed, and test ways to make them better.
In order to achieve accurate and meaningful feedback from Victorian citizens, the trial service centres were designed and constructed in a way that made them feel authentic—like a 'real' Victorian Government customer service centre might.

We tested and learned in a full-scale, simulated environment, allowing for rapid improvement to the entire system of service. Service deficiencies and customer pain points were identified quickly and addressed in near real-time, and decisions were made in a far more 'real' context and environment.

Design Process

Using floorplan layouts developed with FigureGround architects, we quickly built one-to-one scale service centres within a large warehouse space attached to our studio. We worked this way to get a sense of how customers flowed through the space, allowing us to change layouts and test new ideas quickly and easily. This allowed us to enact service walkthroughs and highlight any potential pain points.

Execution

A complete customer and brand experience was designed from scratch. From the way people flow through the space, the information architecture of digital touchpoints, to furniture design, fabrication and install.

Street-level signage, internal wayfinding and motion design (for street-facing LCD screens) were all important brand design considerations for the experience, as were uniforms, digital screen designs, newspaper advertisements and promotional posters.

Due to our rapid prototyping approach, we were able to identify and design around pain points quickly and early, allowing us more time finessing the look and feel of the spaces and building a highly polished user interface for people to interact with.

Experience

The experience design process started with our team talking with Victorians about their relationship with government transactions. By building empathy with citizens, we were able to identify the important things that caused friction, and design a better experience in response. Importantly, we spoke primarily with older citizens, recent migrants and those with low technological literacy.

Service walkthroughs were enacted with real concierges ensuring interactions in the shopfronts were efficient and enjoyable for both parties.
Digital experiences also went through many iterations and were designed to be both elegant and easy to use. User testing demonstrated that user interfaces were sufficiently invisible.

Commerciality

By measuring the service preferences of thousands of citizens we were able to form a much more realistic picture of how and where to improve the current mode of service delivery. These results form part of a business case for the State of Victoria to proceed with a service capability that is far more efficient for the people of Victoria. There is potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in savings to be gained by designing a more efficient and enjoyable way to transact with the government.

Sustainability

The service centres have been specifically designed to reduce the complexity involved in interacting with the government. There are enormous environmental and fiscal benefits to building more efficient modes of service provision. Although this project was a short term trial, further financial and environmental modeling will take place over the coming months.

Most importantly, our team has introduced an agile, efficient and lean methodology into the ranks of government. By working in this manner on more and more projects, government can make better decisions in the interest of its citizens, at far lower cost and for greater societal benefit.

Innovation

A major innovation used in the project was the rapid production of one-to-one scale service centres within our warehouse studio. We used cardboard boxes to build out the models, getting a sense of how customers flowed through the space, and allowing us to change layouts and test the effects quickly and easily.
Building a scale model and simulating customer interaction (in the form of service walkthroughs) also allowed our team to optimise the placement and performance of analytics hardware and adjust the layout and scale of furniture.

Impact

This project has the potential to influence the way that government deals with all Victorians. For example, by building a better understanding of the service preferences of recent migrants, the elderly and people with physical disabilities, we can build a more inclusive transaction experience.

More broadly, large monetary and environmental gains can be made by moving to a single point of interaction with the government.

Sustainability Design

While this project was intended to be a short-term trial, there are great time and monetary efficiencies in the longer term should the government progress the business case.

Designing for people with disabilities and older, less tech savvy users will mean a more even and consistent customer experience, regardless of demographic, age or social status.

Our prototyping process also allowed us to iterate and improve at very low cost with little impact on building materials. All cardboard used during prototyping were overflow moving boxes and have since been recycled back into the same system.