This was one of the calmest weeks in a while. I had some actual gaps in my calendar this week instead of being entirely booked out. That left me with time to think and tinker.
Sketching a unified service experience
With a quarterly check-in with senior stakeholders scheduled for next week, Tito and I started sketching out a vastly improved experience across service touchpoints utilising the elements of the umbrella brand.
In a workshop in late January 2024, which is over 18 months ago, ministerial director Bürger described the problem: a poorly fragmented experience that users have while using almost any transactional service in Germany.
From what I can see, little has happened since then. No public sector entity involved in some of the shown service journeys has made any substantial changes. When basic components like digital identity, payment, submission and status tracking are involved, things are just where they were 1.5 years ago.
Members of our umbrella brand team and I have been approaching various government entities public sector organisations. The response has been muted, though. So, as pictures are more powerful than words, we started sketching out what an improved, consistent cross-touchpoint linked to a transactional service could, or instead, should look like.
It’s not about a specific service. It is about comparing the current fragmentation to what a unified experience would look and could feel like. The pictures – or interface journeys – we are drawing is what all senior leaders should have in their briefcase all the time to reference in conversation. Instead, often things are about technology and technology choices. But if senior folks don’t have seen a north star, they cannot use their political capital and influence to move towards it.
Building on the KERN Design System, we focused on 6 key screens to bring our alternative reality across:
- Search result page
- Service start page
- Option selection page
- Authentication page
- Personal data sharing consent page
- Payment dialogue page
- Success page
I do not know if others have sketched similar screen sequences. Somehow, I hope so. I find that all too often, designers in other parts of the public sector don’t think they have the remit to interfere with other people’s work. I have a different view. I believe in the power of provocotypes to start a discussion and engage with others in dialogue, including people on the working level as much as senior stakeholders across departments.
For colleagues in the UK, this approach is only worth a shrug. It’s straightforward and obvious. But in most countries, having a consistent service experience is the exception, not the norm. In the US, for example, there is a powerful .gov domain, and government websites have a slim identifying header. But the visual consistency of US government websites is somewhat limited. Styles and components are rarely shared. The US Web Design System is loosely followed. Other countries are doing far worse, Germany included. I want us to do better. That is why we sketch: to start conversations and engage with stakeholders.
So far, the KERN Design System mainly covers styles and components. Flows and page patterns are almost entirely missing. That’s why I wanted to have designers working on KERN join our service patterns workshop last summer. That didn’t work out. In the coming weeks and months, I want us to go deeper into service patterns. I spoke with designers Felix, Marlene and Tom about it this week. They are currently working on how to bring the unified design system to their justice service platform. That work will stretch over the next few months. It will take us a while to swap all styles and components. The larger page and service patterns we have developed are robust, and I want us to feed them back into the ongoing KERN work stream.
On another note, I am warming up to the font choice of the cross-government design system. Last autumn, when it emerged that ‘Fira Sans’ would be the typeface used as the primary font, I wasn’t excited. As we design more with it, we are getting to know it better. Looking further into the font’s origins, there is a link to German government communication that is bringing things full circle.
I am a sucker for a good narrative for a design choice. Remembering that ‘Fira’ is based on ‘FF Meta’, which is based on ‘PT 55’, which was developed for the German Federal Post Office in the mid-1980s. The brief led the way to a font that was “neutral, not fashionable, trendy or nostalgic”.
I’m not the greatest fan of ‘Fira Sans’ as a #typeface. But as it is used now as font for Germany’s cross-government #designSystem, it brings things full circle. ‘Fira’ is based on ‘FF Meta’, commissioned initially for the German Federal Post Office in 1984 as a “neutral, space-saving typeface”.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) August 9, 2025 at 2:50 PM
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Maybe we should invite the type designer for a guest talk sometime.
Witnessing new services launch
While having not made any contributions to this, I was delighted to see us launch new and improved offerings this week.
In the justice space, we have consistently added interactive guidance and transactional services to service.justiz.de. Just this week, we launched ‘Protecting money in the case of account seizure’. It follows the same solid design patterns we have already applied to the other justice services that are live.
We launched yet another justice offering on service.justiz.de — ‘Protecting money in the case of account seizure’ It’s interactive guidance that helps people in financial distress understand what to do. It matters: There are about 300,000 account seizures per month service.justiz.de/kontopfaendung
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) August 6, 2025 at 1:11 PM
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My colleagues Joshua and Paul also published a blog post, in which they reflect on creating better forms. Their conclusion: They need to become domain experts to design good digital forms in a new topical area.
“For example, up to 90% of all written applications for legal aid are incomplete or filled out incorrectly. The situation is similar for other administrative and judicial forms.” My colleagues @jonowak.eu and @paulpistorius.bsky.social share why they had to become domain experts to digitalise forms
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) August 6, 2025 at 7:31 PM
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Made for civil servants, the team working on digital-ready laws refreshed their support offering’s landing page. Iterated based on users’ questions and requests, they re-designed it entirely. It now displays a step-by-step guide in its centre.
We are supporting law and policymakers in the earliest part of the drafting process. For me, it’s a major frontier for #GovDesign. Our #DigitalCheck team just improved the landing page of our support offering for digital-ready legislation work. 👉🏻 erarbeiten.digitalcheck.bund.de
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) August 7, 2025 at 10:06 AM
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I will be curious to see how it evolves further.
Readying the first new peer review report
Two weeks after running the first peer review against the updated Service Standard, we are now putting together the report. For us, it is the chance to improve on the established format.
The report that’s coming together will be the first published on servicestandard.gov.de. Moving all future reports away from the transparency section of our organisation’s website has been a goal for over two years. Again, patience was needed.
While putting the report together, we made minor changes to the structure and language. Also, Tito has proposed a new visual system to get a quicker overview of the service’s performance. In addition to colour, it uses icons to indicate the recognised progress against the criteria. The system should allow for some scanability. I am curious to see it tested in the coming days.
We plan to publish the first report this month. We are actively looking for external services to review, while we have internally developed services working towards preparing for review in autumn.
What’s next
Next week is about finishing things:
- the peer review report
- the unified service experience sketch
- the service design job description
- the discipline page for design and user research
- a first guidance for the handbook section of the Service Standard
The calendar is moderately busy. I hope I get all of these things done.
Also, Tobi from CityLAB and I plan to have a chat about a public design podcast idea. Let’s see where that leads …