beckymiller

beckymiller https://beckymiller.co.uk beckymiller Tue, 07 Oct 2025 13:29:43 +0000 https://beckymiller.co.uk en GHS http://beckymiller.co.uk/GHS Tue, 07 Oct 2025 13:29:43 +0000 beckymiller 458094 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact GHS Government Human Service: stories from the post-digital era beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact GHS Government Human Service: stories from the post-digital era Pubs 4 Nature http://beckymiller.co.uk/Pubs-4-Nature Thu, 06 Feb 2025 22:52:33 +0000 beckymiller 455809 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Nature pub trailNature twins Buy a map £1 - get discount on a beer at any of the pubs The Eagle - The Pond - The Basket Makers - The HartingtonThe Dolphin - The Adonis Blue - The Beaver - The Doormouse - The Hedgehog - Greg long-eared bat - Water Vole - SundewBeer mats and posters to go in pubshttps://www.southdowns.gov.uk/wildlife-spotting/rare-species/ beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Nature pub trailNature twins Buy a map £1 - get discount on a... Talking Products http://beckymiller.co.uk/Talking-Products Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:35:04 +0000 beckymiller 454822 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Talking ProductsWhat if the objects of your desire had something to tell you? beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Talking ProductsWhat if the objects of your desire had something to... policy design rebrand http://beckymiller.co.uk/policy-design-rebrand Sat, 20 May 2023 21:58:24 +0000 beckymiller 443143 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact policy design rebrand Derisking decision making  <img width="1192" height="1678" width_o="1192" height_o="1678" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/be3ba042425a4317640e3a2e60b0ff423725688dd1f2dd40e8e802538aafc06b/Screenshot-2023-05-20-at-23.11.31.png" data-mid="1288373" border="0" /><img width="1182" height="1666" width_o="1182" height_o="1666" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/cdf18b2a03dfc18fc3e04f72c88b2b235ebf40bd3d2c74f55bf249fb3de16205/Screenshot-2023-05-20-at-23.25.27.png" data-mid="1288375" border="0" /><img width="1184" height="1674" width_o="1184" height_o="1674" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/92e09a30e8d95f959844aa94c839c2a0cec6d5b569a513d3f06d8086b9781a59/Screenshot-2023-05-20-at-23.25.43.png" data-mid="1288376" border="0" />Service design is very much a T-shaped job. You cover everything from research, through to protoyping and testing, strategy for launching and scaling something, and telling the story of it all along the way. So when I joined Policy Lab in 2019, hired as a ‘service and communications designer’, there was the low-hanging fruit of keeping the blog active but also the more interesting, strategic piece of work on telling our team’s story - what we were doing and why it mattered - why you should care about it. Uncovering the why of Policy Lab was a probably the most interesting puece of work I’ve done as a civil servant. It was a design project in itself. It involved digging back into the history of Policy Lab, (I read nearly every single one of our blogs), multiple workshops with our team, and a process of osmosis working on our projects alongside policy makers, to understand their motivations and what policy actaully is. Inspired by the GDS poster tumblr and art school. The history of the poster as a campaign tool goes back to the printing press.  Talked about as ‘open policy making’ opening it up to ... they all talk about what they are doing but not why. I’m a bit of a fan of David Hiatt’s work. In particular his book on DO Purpose. People get behind brands because they believe in why they do what they do. The purpose. In my humble opinion, and in my experience in working in user-centred policy design, the reason for using user-centred or open policy making approaches and methods, is ultimately to derisk decision making. I believe that that evidence-based policy making needs a rebrand! So I made these posters and this little video. I also wrote a few blogs. beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact policy design rebrand Derisking decision making  Service design... Colander Therapy http://beckymiller.co.uk/Colander-Therapy Fri, 25 Feb 2022 23:19:10 +0000 beckymiller 420305 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Colander Therapy Desperately dealing with climate anxiety <img width="640" height="480" width_o="640" height_o="480" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/aeeb93fc64bd9d1b69e8d3e4158cd5238317d8928aa10e8585f44455deb98c8c/IMG_7778.JPG" data-mid="1166968" border="0" /> beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Colander Therapy Desperately dealing with climate anxiety Cycle Census http://beckymiller.co.uk/Cycle-Census Fri, 25 Feb 2022 23:15:06 +0000 beckymiller 420304 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Cycle CensusThere used to be nine-million bicycles in Beijing. But how many in your town right now? <img width="1558" height="1166" width_o="1558" height_o="1166" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/b4bae4f9e8db4f986591f7aa3fd2da4cbf40509cf894e9c14e85fa5c06d7f60f/Screenshot-2023-05-20-at-23.23.12.png" data-mid="1288374" border="0" /> In 2021 the UK has it’s XXXth census. You can read the full history of censuses on the UK government’s website, but in a nutshell their purpose has always been to udnerstand the state of the nation in order to provide adepquate services for the population. The old adage, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. In the most recent census I was particular draw to the question which asked how many cars and vans your household had access to. You can see the results here. However, as someone who doesn’t own either a bike or a van, I opt to own a bicycle for nearly all my transport needs. And there is now significant understand why we might try to encourage more people to opt for this mode of transport where possible. Bicycles tick multiple outome boxes, from zero carbon emission, to public health and saving space in cities. They are aspirational element of many national, urban and rural development strategies. So I find it strange that we aren’t seeking out the data to design for them, in the same way that we do for cars and vans. Let’s count bicycles too So I am proposing a Cycle Census. I think it would be really useful to know more about both the number and types of bicycles that people have in order to design them into our future low-carbon visions for our in our towns, cities and villages. I think we’ll do a better job of it if we know what we’re dealing with. But it’s not just the numbers As I wrote about in a recent blog, to make good decisions, we need both quantitive numbers (the size of the challenge) and qualitative data (the nature of the challenge). So I am proposing a slightly different style of data collection. I invite people to do a bit more than tick a box on a survey. I’m inviting people to submit their bicycle story ... #CycleCensus beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Cycle CensusThere used to be nine-million bicycles in Beijing. But how... DiY:PhD http://beckymiller.co.uk/DiY-PhD Thu, 30 Sep 2021 22:14:22 +0000 beckymiller 412784 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact DiY:PhDPermission to come aboard? <img width="800" height="536" width_o="800" height_o="536" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/d02bad09019f801dca450bddaad5a4087d25902eb4f2ebcefe525b8dbc72d06e/themyceliumnetwork.jpeg" data-mid="1127863" border="0" /> In the universities of Medieval Europe, study was organized in four faculties: the basic faculty of arts, and the three higher faculties of theology, medicine, and law (canon law and civil law). All of these faculties awarded intermediate degrees (bachelor of arts, of theology, of laws, of medicine) and final degrees. Initially, the titles of master and doctor were used interchangeably for the final degrees—the title Doctor was merely a formality bestowed on a Teacher/Master of the art—but by the late Middle Ages the terms Master of Arts and Doctor of Theology/Divinity, Doctor of Law, and Doctor of Medicine had become standard in most places (though in the German and Italian universities the term Doctor was used for all faculties). beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact DiY:PhDPermission to come aboard? In the universities of Medieval... Climate Work Show and Tell http://beckymiller.co.uk/Climate-Work-Show-and-Tell Fri, 12 Mar 2021 19:43:19 +0000 beckymiller 400594 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Climate Work Show and TellPublic servants talking about climate action #govclimate <img width="1000" height="750" width_o="1000" height_o="750" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/f827b57e35737c67b4bec8bcbc4352700bd2fc66930cc089f1dc25d6ad81385b/CWST-banner.jpg" data-mid="1155304" border="0" /> I started this project in March 2020 with fellow government service designer, Ben Carpenter, after a chance meeting at DOTI Fest in 2019 and a bit of soul searching into what the climate emergency means for civil servants. We launched during GDS Services Week 2020, and we’ve been steadily growing our audience since. The cross-government Climate Work Show and Tell is a design experiment. It’s built on the hypothesis that if we create a safe space in government to share the good work that is already happening to address the climate emergency, then it might help to accelerate government action on the climate emergency by inspiring more of this kind of work, as well as faciliating collaboration - like many over-sized organisations government work is often a victim of silos. (In fact it resonates with the ideas behind setting up SustainLab RCA.) How does it work? The format is a simple 45-minute Zoom call on the first Thursday of each month. Two public servants and one external speaker each talk about their work for 5 minutes, followed by 5 minutes for questions. Each mini 5-minute ‘show and tell’ serves as a trailer or teaser for their work. It gives a flavour of what they’re doing. People can then follow up indiviudually for more in-depth conversations where relevant. The key design principle is holding just enough time and space to expose a captive audience to the range of work on government climate action. We share slides and contact details by email after each session. What have we heard so far?So far we’ve held XX show and tell sessions with XX speakers from XX different public sector organisations. This includes central and local government, and ‘arm’s length’ government bodies such as the Environment Agency.  So what? As the urgency of the climate emergency grows with each new IPPC report, permission from political leaders seems to follow (to a lesser or greater degree) in it’s wake, giving public servants permission to design and deliver policies and services which help to create the societal conditions for the necessary change. I believe public servants need to be ready for these moments and anticipate the political permissions which the climate emergency will eventually (hopefully) precipitate. With our design hypothesis above in mind, the intention is that the monthly x-govt Climate Work Show and Tells help to create part of an ecosystem of touchpoints to support proactive public servants to make this important work a reality.... An emerging ecosystem Through the Climate Work Show and Tells we’ve started to discover initiatives across government with similar objectives to ours. Some are campaigns to raise awareness, others are communities to share ideas, ask for help and support each other, and others offer training in carbon/climate literacy. As a service designer, I find it helpful to think of this collection of initiatives as a collection of ‘touchpoints’ which faciliate multiple, connected networks of user journies crisis-crossing right across the silos of the public sector behind the scenes. <img width="1000" height="563" width_o="1000" height_o="563" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/307281029669fc437b6107e06a2d1f2e9f4c512d81b21cc528c7d573651e8ced/wilhelm-gunkel-toHsK7MKmek-unsplash.jpg" data-mid="1155312" border="0" /> They are the grassroots or the mycellium, the underground living network of connections. Given the right conditions, they have the potential to penetrate the silos of the public sector backstage and bare fruit on the surface for people and planet. As Indy Johar noted at the Design for Planet festival (Nov 2021): “Innovation [aka creative change] happens at the frontline, not at the CEO level. And not everything is a workshop; collaboration is not restricted to the theory of a workshop.”  What if...? So the format of the Climate Work Show and Tells means that we are surfacing the ‘climate’ work happening across the public sector. This could be quite a helpful unintended consequence. Seeing the bigger picture of a policy, across organisational boundries is not something that government is set up to do. It is something that it often sought out in a top down way through specific systems mapping projects. But what if you could flip that logic? What if we could create live system maps of a policy areas just by creating the conditions that encourage people doing the work to proactively share what their working on?   Some personal reflections... Designing the backstage of government is hard work. There’s no blank canvas. It’s not like designing a new service to go to market, where you’re in control of the whole end-to-end user or customer journey. It’s about getting clear on the outcomes you’re looking see, and working with what you’ve got to join up the dots. Seeing what touchpoints are already out there there, what’s working well, what’s missing, identifiying political opportunities, and finding how to tap into the motivations and align with the user needs of public servants and ministers alike. Ben and I also wrote this blog asking civil servants: What’s your work got to do with climate change? (Feb 2020). #govclimate Photos by Guido Blokker and Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash. beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact Climate Work Show and TellPublic servants talking about climate action... The Garden of Data http://beckymiller.co.uk/The-Garden-of-Data Fri, 12 Mar 2021 19:43:11 +0000 beckymiller 400593 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact The garden of dataA new theory of evolution I developed a series of illustrations to tell the story (as I understand it) of evolution - contrast between how we’re tried control how the planet works and how it actaully works. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks James Lovelock Novascene - humans data is giving birth to a new lifeform, just as oxygen from plants enables animal lifeform, so our data emissions is enabling a new lifeform to evolve. But we need to be concious of the conditions we are creating for it to evolve....  beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact The garden of dataA new theory of evolution I developed a series of... Curú http://beckymiller.co.uk/Curu Sun, 11 Oct 2020 15:35:26 +0000 beckymiller 387089 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact CurúWaiting to dive <img width="850" height="599" width_o="850" height_o="599" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/ab517018751082334a580cb46ee469273c031ec0d001a121e736f743bf610432/curu_1.JPG" data-mid="992156" border="0" />I recently found a sketchbook in a box under the bed at my mum’s house, and these two images fell out of the pages. I took them on a sandy beach in Costa Rica the summer before heading to Brighton to study. That was in Curú Bay Nature Reseve on the Nicoya Peninsula. I’d spent most of the year leading up to it working and saving up  so that I could train as PADI open water diver. Once qualified I could then help on a conservation project helping to position aritifical base sections of reef made from old car tyres, that were designed to encourage coral to grow back.  But before we could get enough underwater hours for our diving qualifications, the lead instructor on the project walked off and abandoned the project along with our ambitions of reef restoration. We were left to entertain ourselves above water, waiting to see if another instructor might be found. I can’t remember exactly how we filled those days, but finding the sketchbook I kept in Costa Rica was happy reminder of a particular afternoon I spent aborbed in driftwood, collecting and arranging it in the wet sand before the tide came in again. An epheramal composition that felt right at the time. Looking back I wonder if it might have been some kind of subconcious sequal to Plaster Longs perhaps? Certainly Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy influences there! <img width="850" height="1134" width_o="850" height_o="1134" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/434c2fdae3f722d64096c998613b23619abd15f24df10e626f8fdd39941fa573/curu_2.JPG" data-mid="992157" border="0" />year: 2001 beckymiller   about   projects   bookshelf   contact CurúWaiting to dive I recently found a sketchbook in a box under the...