Service design
Designing services that work for people.
I work with leaders and teams across government, healthcare, commercial and social good organisations, designing end-to-end services and experiences that work for the people who use them and the people who run them.
See what I’m working on now.
What I do
From messy problem to clear service.
I join teams as a senior or lead service designer, or come in for a focused piece of work. Either way, I help everyone see the whole service, understand the people in it, and agree on what to change.
Discovery & research.
Getting close to the people who use and deliver a service, in prisons, pharmacies, clinics and offices, to understand what is really happening.
Mapping & blueprints.
Journey maps, service blueprints and ecosystem maps that make the whole service visible, including the parts that usually stay hidden.
Facilitation & co-design.
Workshops that bring together staff, users and senior leaders so decisions are made with the people they affect.
Strategy & capability.
Turning a vision into a service strategy and shared ways of working, and helping teams build design skills that last after I leave.
Organisations I’ve worked with
Selected work
Recent projects.
A few examples from my service design work. Full case studies live on my design consultancy site, Apply Design (opens in a new tab).
Connected navigation across Digital Prison Services.
Designing navigation and prisoner profiles across 15+ services, replacing a legacy system costing £7m a year, from research in prisons through to private beta.
Read the case study (opens in a new tab)
Living with Covid services and service taxonomy.
A service portfolio and catalogue that teams used to plan transitions, decommission services, and embed customer experience as a lasting strategic function.
Read the case study (opens in a new tab)
A digital skills playbook for excluded communities.
Bringing three funding streams together into one delivery playbook for digital skills and employability, co-designed with community organisations.
Read the case study (opens in a new tab)"Aimee is a talented person to work with, she's able to take a project brief and run with it even in very complex environments she stays calm and is flexible enough to work within the situation. She has great analytic thinking skills which was key to the success of our project. Aimee's knowledge, advice and design approach made her an absolute pleasure to work with. She created a positive and enjoyable work environment and I would eagerly collaborate again."
Lina Nillson - Service Design Lead, Ministry of Justice · Read more
How I work
Explore. Design. Create.
The same rhythm runs through my design work and my coaching. It fits naturally with the government’s test and learn approach: start small, work close to the people a service is for, and let what you learn shape what happens next.
Explore.
I start by understanding the people, the context and the constraints. Research, conversations and mapping show where things are working and where they are getting stuck. I spend time with frontline staff and the people using the service, so the work starts from what really happens rather than assumptions.
Design.
Together with your team and the people you serve, we shape and test ideas, using prototypes and blueprints to agree what the service should become. We try things out early and in small ways, in real settings where we can, so we learn quickly what works and what doesn’t before investing more.
Create.
I help bring it to life, working with delivery teams so the change lands well, and leaving behind the tools and confidence to keep improving it. I help teams build on the evidence of what’s working and keep testing as things grow, so improvement becomes part of how they work.
Experience.
- 15+ years as a design consultant helping organisations change how they work, after starting out in digital, design and media production.
- Lead and senior service designer roles across the Ministry of Justice, NHS Blood & Transplant, UKHSA, Wellcome, the Co-op and more.
- Leading teams, running workshops, and producing service blueprints, journey maps and ecosystem maps.
Writing & learning.
- Contributor to This is Service Design Doing and the Product Design Career Workbook.
- First-class Digital Management Master’s degree with Hyper Island.
- BA in Philosophy & Cultural Studies from Cardiff University.
Here for coaching instead?
I also coach thoughtful leaders, designers, creatives and sensitive entrepreneurs, one to one.
Got a project in mind?
Tell me a little about what you’re working on and where you’re stuck, and I’ll get back to you.