Putting users first is not the answer to everything

Cassie Robinson – Medium

Starting with user needs has become the axiomatically correct way of framing almost any government design problem. That’s a great deal better than not starting with user needs, but it also carries some very real risks and problems. One is that it tends to a very individualistic approach: the user is a lone individual, whose only relevant relationship is with the service under consideration. The wider social network, within which we are all nodes, doesn’t get much of a look in. Another is that we risk prioritising the completion of a process over the achievement of an outcome. Both of those addressed in this post, which directly challenges what has become the conventional starting point.

But perhaps what most distinguishes public services (in the widest sense) from other kinds of service is that there are often social needs which don’t always align with individual needs. The post refers to moral and collective needs, though it’s not entirely clear either whether ‘moral’ is a helpful label in this context or whether in practice moral and collective are being used as synonyms.

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