I like to think of our work on the UK’s courts system as double-faceted. My team (Ministry of Justice’s Digital Justice System Team) is working to improve outcomes for people who are experiencing legal issues like evictions, divorce and other family issues.
On the one hand, there is a very real policy problem of a system potentially unable to cope with additional pressures stemming from increasing demands on courts and tribunals, some of which do not need to be there. On the other, there is a very real human problem of people going through a deeply traumatising event like losing their home and falling into a vortex of compounding issues, like homelessness, family breakdown, loss of employment and more.
The two are of course intimately linked. If many disputes do not need to go to court to be resolved and can be addressed early, then is there an opportunity to spare both parties from going in front of a judge? And can we actually think of this in the context of potential preventive measures that would resolve the problem before it explodes into a full-blown dispute?
Mapping the experience of citizens
We arrived at this framing – highly interesting from a departmental business perspective – by deploying the user-centred policy design approach. We started by going through a plethora of existing research, both internal and external. We spoke with subject matter experts across Whitehall, we took part in workshops with external experts such as ombudsmen, dispute resolution providers, third and legal sector, as well as countless meetings with anyone with some expertise in this field.
This led us to developing a map that traces the journey that users go through as they get evicted. What is most interesting is that, as I was designing the map, I started with my traditional policy hat on: where does MoJ interest begin? “The answer is clear”, I thought, “it starts when the tenant receives an eviction notice”.
Upon reflection, and much research, I realised that the journey for people does not actually begin there, but starts much earlier, with a change (or deterioration) in the relationship between tenant and landlord.
We continued to work our way through the whole journey, thinking of all possible actions the parties could take and identifying as many pain-points we could throughout the entire journey. By the end of it, we had a very specialised understanding of how users move through this journey, what challenges they face and, perhaps most importantly in this context, where and why problems begin to appear in the relationship between tenant and landlord.
If we want to adopt a preventative approach to legal disputes, we need to understand users not as abstract entities that move through the system, but as real people facing real problems.
User-centred design drives meaningful change
At its core, user-centred policy design rests on the idea that change needs to be driven by user needs. This is not a complex, nor controversial, concept. Yet, this approach often takes the backseat in the world of policymaking, where there is a finite amount of time to deliver on manifesto commitments and urgent priorities.
Indeed, user-centred policy design is little understood, and policymaking is still widely driven by the commitment to solutions that are based on pre-existing assumptions. This means that sometimes our policies do not meet the objectives they were set out to achieve, with money being spent on something that has not delivered the best outcome for the people it was intended for.
User-centred policy design entails understanding user needs in the context of their real-life experiences and develop a solution that is rooted in empirical evidence. In the context of our work, we strive to understand how and why problems experienced by people exist within the context of the wider journey they embark upon when trying to resolve a legal dispute. In doing so, we are able to identify opportunities to deliver meaningful change and provided services that truly reflects what people need.
A practical tool for policymakers
This was the driving force behind our work to create an ecosystem map of the civil, family and tribunals justice system. It is the first-ever interactive representation of user journeys through the complexities of our system …and the most accurate too. For the first time, the ministry had a user journey that is truly reflective of people’s experience, moving beyond the traditional assumption that users follow a linear sequence of steps that takes them from experiencing to resolving their legal disputes.
People are often curious about the different ways this tool can be used, and two things immediately come to mind.
First, it is a new framework that policymakers can adopt to understand where exactly in the user journey that changes to the system can be more effective. The map enables an appreciation of how different parts of a situation or problem are connected and how they influence each other, thereby allowing colleagues to address system-wide problems and produce interventions that have the most impact.
Second, the map brings together decades of internal and external research on user behaviours, including the structural and behavioural challenges people experience as they try to resolve their problems. Anyone who works across the civil, family or tribunals justice system can rely on it to understand how users perceive, move across, and operate the services we provide them with.
Good design underpins real impact
From my experience, the territory is still somewhat uncharted. We are the first fully multidisciplinary team in the MoJ and, though the learning curve has been very steep, we are now in a place where we can have a real impact in exploring and testing solutions that really work for people.
Yet, this approach is still perceived as fairly experimental, bordering on academic, in more traditional policy settings. The real test will be how we reconcile the fast-paced, often reactive nature of policymaking, with a more evidence-based and proactive approach to it that by nature is more time-consuming.
But there can be little doubt that there is a growing appetite for this approach to policy, as evidenced by our Government’s recent emphasis on innovation. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, spoke at length of multidisciplinary “test and learn” teams, “to experiment and find new and innovative ways to fix problems”.
User-centred policy design speaks exactly to this sort of approach, and I, for one, am delighted to be a part of this endeavour.
Join our community
We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.
Leave a comment