Transforming design
Service design is often constrained by slow processes, high costs, and bias in who gets to participate. Traditional research methods such as focus groups, interviews, and workshops generate useful insights, but they are resource-intensive and often capture only a partial view of user need at that moment in time.
With deep experience in service design, we know the value of these approaches, but we also know their limitations. That is why we are developing more intelligent ways of designing services: using technology to model behaviour, expand the evidence base, and help organisations create, test and deploy solutions that are continuously shaped by real users at greater speed and scale.
Mortar's Service Design practice is delivered alongside a suite of intelligence tools that help organisations to initially understand and engage their users in new ways. In doing so we enable organisations to reimagine and transform the way they deliver their services. We combine deep user research with expertise in accessibility and digitally inclusive design to ensure that services are accessible, equitable, and genuinely effective.
How it Works
We approach service design as an iterative, collaborative process. Rather than delivering a static blueprint we embed ourselves and our data gathering tools in your organisation, your data and work flows. At the same time we work with your staff, user groups, and stakeholders to identify the true challenges and to generate insights that reflect the needs of everyone involved.
- Discovery and research: Deep-dive into your service landscape through data analysis and engagement to understand user needs and system constraints.
- Establish and understand your data: Create the right datasets to craft, test and simulate your services and systems.
- Build and deploy user personas: Develop custom user personas for simulating, testing and mapping solutions.
- Service models: Build a model to simulate the end-to-end experience of your personas; identifying gaps and moments that matter through simulation and testing.
- Co-design and prototyping: Run collaborative workshops to generate ideas, test concepts, and iterate quickly with real users.
- Service blueprinting: Map the front-stage and back-stage processes to align people, technology, and policy around a coherent service model.
Key Features
Our Service Design tools enable the exploration of alternative methods and approaches needed to take your service from problem to working solution:
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User Research and Insight We develop full models of services based on qualitative and quantitative research and data from the people who use and deliver your services. Using service models allows us to conduct research that interrogates and helps to shape new approaches, develop content and improve reporting. Interviews, ethnographic observation, and data analysis contribute to the model to build a rich picture of the needs, behaviours, and context of your users and customers.
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Persona creation and Journey Mapping Our in depth technical research produces highly refined groups of user personas. Libraries of specific tailored users that enable us to simulate, test and map the full user journey, from first point of contact to resolution, surfacing friction, duplication, and inequity. These maps become powerful tools for aligning teams and prioritising change. We can also target solutions for specific personas, or for those with specific characteristics such as accessibility needs.
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Co-design Workshops Our workshops are inclusive by design, ensuring diverse voices shape the outcome. Using Mortar's technology the insights captured support the ondoing development of custom models, hybrid datasets and user persona libraries that can be used to simulate future workshops in response to new features and design.
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Prototyping and Testing We build low and high-fidelity prototypes to test assumptions quickly. By putting ideas in front of users early, we reduce the risk of building the wrong thing and accelerate the path to a working solution.
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Service Blueprints and Design Documentation We produce clear, actionable service blueprints that align policy, people, and process. These documents give teams a shared reference point for implementation and continuous improvement.
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Implementation Support Service design doesn't end at delivery. We support your teams through the transition to a new model of service — providing change management guidance, training, and ongoing review.
Case Study Highlight
Mortar worked with Essex County Council to design pathways for users to better understand and enhance their digital skills. By embedding user research and co-design into the process, we helped the council move from a reactive model to a proactive, community-led service that improves employability and generates a social return on investment as digital skills improve. Read more
Why It Matters
Too many services are designed around organisational convenience rather than user need. The result is services that are hard to navigate, deliver inconsistent outcomes, and fail the people who need them most. Service Design addresses this by putting users at the centre — not as an afterthought, but as the starting point for every decision.
Good service design also makes economic sense. By identifying and eliminating inefficiency, duplication, and failure demand early, organisations can reduce operational costs while improving outcomes. Our work consistently demonstrates that investing in design at the front end pays dividends at every stage of delivery.
Get in Touch
If your organisation is ready to move beyond patchwork fixes and rethink how your services work from the ground up using intelligence and new technology, we would love to hear from you. Get in touch to discuss how our Service Design practice can help you build services that truly work for the people who need them.