Thames Valley Housing Association - Building service design capability
The future of high density living envionments
I worked with Thames Valley Housing Association (TVHA) to understand the service needs of residents needs living in a high-density environment. I also helped to build their in-house service design capabilities.
Thames Valley Housing co-creation workshop
Aims
As part of a team from Snook, I led this project and helped to guide the newly formed TVH Service Design team members through their first project. We spent two days a week with the TVH team to provide support, training, and knowledge-sharing throughout this process. Working on a live project gave the team the opportunity to learn and practice service design approaches and methodologies in real time, while solving problems that would improve the lives of TVH residents.
Team member putting up a post it note on a wall of post it notes
process
I co-ordinated, planned and carried out research across five user groups across various housing developments in London. We spent time working with TVH staff to understand their service offer. This research allowed us to better understand the needs of both staff and residents which helped us create a programme for improving future services.
We went through a series of rapid ideation rounds and produced quick prototypes to illustrate potential solutions. We then put these in front of residents at a co-creation workshop and further developed the areas that met users’ and TVH staff needs.
Filled out persona tool
Outcomes and impact
We created five potential work streams that underwent concept evaluation. Each of these had a ‘Do, Next, Vision’-model to ensure next steps were clear and actionable to deliver the service into the next stages of implementation.
We worked to define the specific needs of residents from the current TVH service and the built environment, and to capture unmet needs. We then created the initial framework for a digital user needs library.
Mentoring
I also co-created a mentoring approach with the Thames Valley Housing service design team as a way of providing continual support for the team as they continued to develop their practice. I supported the development of the Service Design team’s strategy, and helping to develop the wider organisation’s approach to service design in order to create a further user-centered organisation.
KEY PROJECT ACTIVITIES
USER RESEARCH-Shadowing staff,user journey creation and analysis of data
CO-DESIGN WORKSHOPS WITH residents across two locations and stakholders
CURRENT SERVICE BLUEPRINTING
Do Next Visions models
Prioritisation frameworks
Rapid prototyping
SERVICE DESIGN COACHING