Wales is well-versed in thinking about the future. The Well-being of Future Generations Act has rightly given us a reputation as a country that takes long-term thinking seriously.
But as the climate crisis intensifies, I’m increasingly aware that the way we design our public services still does not fully reflect the scale of that challenge. If we want the systems we are creating today to be fit for the future, design needs to take the planet into account as much as people.
At Perago, a Swansea-based SME, we partner with organisations across the public, private and third sectors to deliver services that work. For most of my career, “services that work” has meant designing through a human lens. We have focused on people’s needs, behaviours and experiences, and tried to redesign services so they are simpler, clearer and more responsive. That mindset is full of empathy and curiosity, but it is also relatively narrow. It tends not to see our planet as a stakeholder in its own right. Design for Planet asks us to widen that lens, adopt a green mindset and think more systemically about the environmental impact of our services – particularly public services – for good and for bad.
For many public sector organisations, starting that journey is as much about mindset as it is about method. Looking at it through a service design lens, Wales has made real progress in building digital, data and technology functions within public bodies. Research has recently shown that while the value of public design is recognised – with around 80% of public sector organisations saying they understand its importance – the implementation of those skills and the availability of resources does not yet match that ambition. In some organisations, having a service design or user research function at all can feel like a luxury.
The job of a service designer is to ask why a problem exists and how we might shape the world around it. Increasingly, that also means asking what impact our choices have on the environment. To do that well, designers need to be equipped with Design for Planet skills as well as human-centred ones. At the moment there is a gap in confidence. Much of the technology we work with is hard to “see”; service design often deals in invisible connections and journeys, not in physical products. That makes it even more important to get as many voices in the room as possible when we are examining the problem we are trying to solve. That might mean bringing together people from housing, digital, commercial life cycle teams and, critically, the citizens who will benefit from – or be impacted by – the service that is being created.
There is also the impact of digital technology itself to consider. I have worked in digital transformation for most of my career. For a long time, if there was something I could digitise, I would. That remains the prevailing mantra in the public sector: how can we make services more efficient and more effective through digital technology?
We know that digital can be a force for innovation and improvement. But there is also an elephant in the room. Quantifying and measuring the environmental impact of our digital technology is still a murky business. We are relatively good at gathering data on scope 1 and 2 emissions. Digital tends to sit in the trickier category of scope 3.
My message to stakeholders and clients is simple: treat your digital decisions as climate decisions. Ask how you will think productively and positively about the long-term impact of those decisions, and do not assume that responsibility sits only with a sustainability team. Some of the barriers are technical, but others are about our ability to scale, learn and share data in ways that help us understand what happens when we move to the cloud, use digital twins or harness the power of new technologies. The technology itself is neutral. How we choose to use it – and how we plan for its long-term impact – is what matters. That includes thinking about how we might mitigate risks or build resilience around them.
My call to action is directed at anyone in the public sector who is thinking about commissioning a programme over the coming years, especially if it is digital or technology-led. Reframe how you look at that work. Do not see it simply as an app or another round of digital transformation. Treat at least one of your major initiatives as a systemic redesign. Run a design sprint. Bring together IT professionals, climate teams, citizens and others with a stake in the outcome, and co-create solutions that are genuinely future facing. If we can make those conscious choices in how we design and commission, we stand a better chance of building public services that work for people and for the planet they depend on.
Cory Hughes talks about this and more in the Government and Not for Profit podcast episode Design for Planet. Listen here.
