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1st Study Group on the Revision of Service Design Guidelines

Last Updated:

Overview

Date and

Tuesday, November 26, 2024, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

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Online meetings

Agenda

  1. Explanation of the purpose of the meeting
  2. Gathering opinions on the guideline revision policy
  3. Summary of the results

Material

References

  • Reference material: "Overview of the revision of the Service Design Related Guidelines and the status of efforts" * Limited to members

List of Attendees

Members (in the order of 50 Japanese syllables / Honorifics omitted)

  • AKASAKA Bunya (Senior Researcher, Human Augmentation Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science
  • Masaya Ando (Professor, Department of Intelligent Media Engineering, Chiba Institute of Technology)
  • Yoshihiro Ito (President, NPO Information Gap Buster)
  • Tetsuya Uda (Director of FUJITSU LIMITED Design Center)
  • Mikie Oi (Integrated Design Laboratory, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
  • Mayumi Saotome (UX / HCD Promotion Group, Quality Management Department, Sony Group Corporation)
  • Yumiko Tanaka (Head of ExperienceDesign, Innovation Center (KOEL), NTT Communications Corporation)
  • Atsushi Hasegawa (Professor, Faculty of Design and Architecture, Musashino Art University, President of Socket Co., Ltd.)
  • Naotake Hirasawa (Professor, Department of Social Informatics, Otaru University of Commerce)
  • Shinichi Fukuzumi (Deputy Team Leader, RIKEN Center for Innovative Intelligence Research)
  • Rei Yamamoto (Free Co., Ltd.)

Digital Agency (Secretariat)

Technical Review Meeting Service Design Task Force

Summary of the Proceedings

Summary of Opinions from Members

1. Explanation of the purpose of the meeting (Q & A)

  • Services other than digital services are also included in the scope of service design in principle, but in this project, is digital services the scope, or does it refer to service design in general including non-digital services?
    • (Answer: Digital Agency) It is necessary to consider the construction of administrative services in a hybrid of digital and non-digital. We will proceed while discussing at this review meeting.
  • Are the guidelines intended to be read by people who understand the guidelines as a whole or who are involved in procurement? Do they touch on organizational structures, such as qualifications for human-centered design (hereinafter referred to as HCD)?
    • (Answer: Digital Agency) The guidebook to be submitted in the second meeting should be understandable to procurement staff and vendors, and should convey the ideal form of procurement. On the other hand, the plan review is highly abstract, and the contents are about guidance for parts that deviate from the specifications and narrowing down of issues, and the readers are divided into two groups.
    • (Response: Digital Agency) Although it is ideal to secure personnel with specialized qualifications in HCD, it is necessary to consider the risk that it will be insufficient and impossible to procure in the public domain. Since vendors also participate in this study group, we would like to create a highly effective guideline based on the opinions of each person.

2. Collection of opinions on the guideline revision policy, 3. Collection of opinions on each group's opinions

Elements to be added to the guidelines
  • While the blueprints and code will remain, it's important to leave a clear design intent for what the service was created for, and the guidelines should address how that works.
  • For digital services, improvements after release are important. It is important to see and improve data while connecting with users digitally, and how to absorb usability problems and make the best use of them next time. For public services, an operational mechanism that continuously provides services is also necessary.
  • In order to realize the digital society where no one left behind, it is necessary to touch on the cost of actually creating it. If the cost of utilizing the guidelines and the corresponding benefits are not shown with concrete examples, the guidelines will not be used. In addition, awareness-raising education to promote understanding among project managers and people in the field is also important.
  • Since there are evaluation methods for research, it is desirable to have an evaluation guideline that enables evaluation of appropriate results based on hypotheses. Since the evaluation is based on hypotheses, it is not necessary to use a single guideline, but care must be taken not to make it a formal evaluation.
  • It is recommended that a concrete system of acceptance inspection, general evaluation and acceptance inspection, and individual verification be added to the guidelines, and it is also necessary to clarify whether these are to be carried out by ministries and agencies or by vendors.
  • "Who is the user?" should be defined in the guidelines. There are cases where the content determined in the requirements definition becomes the premise and the information of the actual user is not reflected. This awareness needs to be changed.
    • Even if they think they understand users, they often don't. Therefore, we think user research and usability testing are important.
  • It should include not only design tools, but also a toolset, management approach, mind-set, common language, process, and six principles of service design (be human-centered, collaborative, iterative, have a continuum of interaction, be real, and have a holistic view). It should include not only the use of tools, but also the attitude towards design.
  • During prototyping and iteration, people need to be supported to try without fear of failure, and to understand that learning from failure is important.
  • Dark patterns are a common problem in digital design. Dark patterns can also occur unintentionally in government, so guidelines should include issues to prevent them.
  • Since the vendor may need to change the current process model, guidelines for changing the process model are necessary to determine the extent to which services are required by the ministries and agencies.
  • Measures to enhance information accessibility include universal design that is easy to use for all users, support for multilayered information provision and transmission methods including audio, video, text, sign language, and Braille, two way communication design (examples include support for real-time chat and voice input, forms for receiving feedback, and simple UI design), customizability according to usage conditions, and real-time support for emergency information.
  • It is necessary to ensure the full participation of the parties concerned. Institutionalization of the participation process at each stage from planning to evaluation, accessibility tests that reproduce actual environments, and utilization of user feedback can be mentioned.
    • Planning stage: Clarification of user needs and initial dialogue with the parties concerned.
    • Design Stage: Gather feedback on UI/UX prototype.
    • Implementation Stage: Conduct accessibility tests to replicate the real environment to detect and eliminate barriers.
    • Evaluation stage: After the service is provided, improvements are continued by utilizing user feedback.
  • As a clear policy of reasonable consideration, responding to various user needs, such as providing real-time subtitles, sign language interpretation, font size adjustment, and voice reading, and a transparent process of requests for consideration can be mentioned.
  • In order to promote the development of the environment in advance, it is necessary to remove predictable barriers in advance and design an environment that all users can use comfortably before reasonable consideration becomes necessary. For example, standard accessibility measures for digital devices and services (e.g., compliance with WCAG), the adoption of universal design in facilities and online platforms, the development of Wi-Fi environments in public facilities, the use of easy-to-understand Japanese, and the design of UI / UX optimized for devices.
  • The enhancement of education and training includes digital literacy education for users and educational programs for service providers and designers.
Elements that should be considered in the guidelines
  • If the service dominant logic is to be implemented, it will require a considerable change in the attitude of administrative officials. Therefore, it is necessary to consider whether it should be included in the guidelines.
  • A process such as the Double Diamond is considered to be a sequential process and is not recognized as an iterative process. Flexible operation is necessary, such as prototyping the part of the Double Diamond process that is not known at the beginning.
  • It has been argued that design is most effective when society's problems become knotty problems that have no answers. It can be used to tell people, especially administrators and bureaucrats, that design is an effective means of dealing with knotty problems. Similarly, abduction, the idea of gaining new insights from making things, is also important.
  • As a measure to reduce the cost burden associated with consideration and development, effectiveness can be ensured by proceeding with large-scale environmental development in stages rather than all at once. For example, there are the following stages.
    • Initial Phase: Standard Accessibility Practices
    • Next stage: Reinforcement of measures for reasonable consideration
    • Final stage: Flexible response based on individual requests
  • As fairness to all users, establish a system that can be accessed by all users, not just a few users. Provide an environment that is easy for everyone to use by integrating accessibility standards into the overall design.
  • In order to establish interactivity of information, it is important not only to provide information, but also to enhance the system for receiving opinions and feedback from users. For example, expanding the feedback window and real-time response, and disclosing the transparency of collected opinions and the results of reflection.
  • In order to ensure the diversity of participation of the parties concerned, the participation process should be designed with a wide range of attributes in mind so that the participating users are not biased toward specific attributes such as the visually impaired and the elderly. In addition, the following considerations should be clearly stated in order to promote the participation of the parties concerned. Reasonable considerations at the time of participation (e.g., providing sign language interpretation, transportation support, and online participation options), and ensuring psychological safety so that participants can easily speak.
  • In terms of responses to disasters and illegal cases, information accessibility during emergencies, measures against communication and infrastructure failures, and responses to misuse and security risks can be mentioned.
Cases in which the guidelines were used and cases in which they were not used
  • If the guidelines become too voluminous, they will not be read. As different guidelines are formulated by various departments, time related to design will be lost just by reading the guidelines. It would be good if the basic framework of the guidelines could be separated from the supplementary parts, and the supplementary parts could be supplemented by chat AI, etc. and updated later.
  • Guidelines tend to be fragmented, and ideas are often lost. It is important to establish design principles upstream so that value judgments can be made based on them. It is important to control fluid issues, and it is necessary to consider how detailed it is and how to incorporate factors.
  • Check sheets and usage sheets may be useful in promoting the use of the Guidelines. However, support tools are not always effective because they only fill in the form as a formality.
  • Guidelines and checklists need to be broken down into a usable state. Just providing documentation and asking people to figure it out for themselves won't work.
  • The interface was softened and made easier to use by reworking the information and making it into modules and templates. If too much documentation is created, how to utilize it becomes a problem, so it is necessary to consider to what extent it should be created and what should be covered by operation.
  • We provide the basics of user research in intra site so that designers can proceed with the research efficiently. When making a hypothesis from the research or verifying it, we divide it by trouble and devise a way to quickly read what you want to know.
  • Even if guidelines are made in a systematic manner, readers may refer to only the information they want at random. It is important to use excerpts and illustrated explanations so that readers can find the information they want wherever they read.
  • In administrative services, it is necessary to use the correct language based on the law, but since it is unfamiliar to ordinary people, support such as terminology is necessary to help understanding.
  • The writing style should be adapted to the reader's level of literacy, but it is difficult to say whether it should be adapted to high - or low-literacy readers. It is better to make the interpretation flexible in the supplementary section.
  • Many agencies using the guidelines are unfamiliar with digital technology, human-centered design, and design thinking. It is important to have the assumptions in place, and to be able to learn and reskilling as needed.
  • Initiatives to deepen understanding of the Guidelines included case studies, reference materials, statistical data on the introduction effects, etc., illustrated storyboards, e-learning with audio, explanation of the usage status of the person concerned, introduction and demonstration of tools that can simulate how the person concerned looks, etc., explanation of the background of the rules, raising awareness of issues through user experience, and accepting questions and feedback and resolving doubts through interactive communication, which helped to improve understanding.
  • It is also important to form a community so that people know that there is a good system and use it. Not only a centralized method but also a method that works well with a distributed system is good.
  • Standardization and certification systems can facilitate the acceptance of guidelines, and support mechanisms from experts are necessary to ensure that guidelines are used correctly.
  • I feel that it is efficient to deepen the understanding of service design through experiences such as design school. I think that the understanding of service design will be deepened by conducting design sprints and explaining the experience as a theory.
Other:
  • It is necessary to sort out how to understand the "digital society where no one left behind" aimed at by the guidelines as a philosophy and how to realize it realistically.
  • Whether non-digital services are included in the service design depends on what is assumed. For example, in the area of accessibility, accessibility of hardware is not limited to support for persons with disabilities, but is a broader concept that enables use from various use environments. Therefore, there is a structural gap between the hardware side and the content side.
  • Service design guidelines are an abstract layer and need to be provided separately from concrete web and UI guidelines. It is important to have both principled guidelines and concrete practical guidelines.
  • Regarding the planning of service design, it is better to include the perspective of DX based on reviewing the basic process of administrative services.
  • In service design, not only the goal of leaving no one behind, but also the design attitude required of the entire government is important. However, if we try to do everything at once, the amount of information will be too much. It is necessary to look over the entire design and have a strategy of which elements to present at which timing. Therefore, it is necessary to consider how to present the design.
  • Regarding the "Realization of digital society where no one left behind," basic policies are necessary, such as what the guidelines aim for, where the Japanese digital administration is heading, whether to support digital with non-digital, and whether to add digital elements to non-digital.

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