Digital Service as an organisation got seriously big. We are over 260 people now. That is more than the United States Digital Service (USDS) was at its peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With many new people from wide-ranging backgrounds joining the organisation in the past few months, we have seen a strong need to tell people who we are and what we do. So, we used a lunch-and-learn slot on Thursday to talk about our grown discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charlotte, Daphne, Sonja, Torsten and I sat down in the 3rd-floor kitchen space on Thursday. A smallish group of people joined us, both in person and online, to hear an update on our progress. Each of us represented a different sub-discipline. Charlotte covered UX and user interface design. Daphne talked about communications design. Sonja represented user research, and Torsten described what content design is doing. I started by giving some context and describing our trajectory so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the start of the session, I acknowledged that, as a discipline, we are a little different. We aren\u2019t just one. But at the same time, we are. No other discipline has this kind of sub-disciplines established. That sets us apart. So, we are a single discipline with diverse areas of expertise in user-centred design. We wanted to acknowledge this and invite interested colleagues for an exchange. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the moment, our discipline represents 19% of the entire organisation. Most designers and researchers work in our \u2018access to justice\u2019 project<\/a>: 11 people at the moment. The second largest team that is well-staffed by our discipline is our work on the \u2018starting a business\u2019 service<\/a> \u2013 8 people. In the policy design space, we have another 7 UX and service designers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n