Mind the Change!: Public Sector as an Arena for User Experience Design

During the last decade, the public sector has undergone radical changes in the way services are delivered to the users. Users are more conscious about their possibility of influencing how services should be. This awareness has stimulated co-operation with designers and developers. At the same time, decreasing funding required new ways to address and re-design services. Public service-providing organizations, such as libraries and museums, have been shown to function well as places to test and implement new services, and also to be able to respond proactively to external inputs. Public institutions have also brought to their arenas new types of services, where, acting as a hub or a living lab, they support hackathons, software carpentry and test labs for new technologies. The workshop will bring researchers and designers together with public servants and share UX design strategies proven applicable in the public sector. The aim is to encourage new ideas concerning collaboration, competencies, design practices and workflows incorporating public services both in digital and physical space.