Service Design in Mind

Timeframe: 2013 – 2018

Dr Laura Warwick worked with Mind, the UK’s largest Mental Health charity, to help them to create a bespoke Service Design programme to support their network of 105 local Minds to use the approach to improve existing services or design new ones.

Mind’s involvement in Dr Laura Warwick PhD research ‘The Value of Service Design to the voluntary community sector‘ was instrumental in the formation of a Service Design programme and team in Mind, creating one of the first in-house SD programmes in the voluntary sector. Laura’s research was used to design the Service Design in Mind (SDiM) strategy, inform job roles, and create training and resources distributed across the organisation. Where previously there had been no agreed, consistent service development process, Service Design became the ‘Mind way’ to develop services.

An independent evaluation of SDiM found it empowered Mind’s service users: ‘Participants talked about feeling more confident, empowered and valued as a result of being involved in projects that they saw as being worthwhile and useful’. The programme has also helped to secure £8,200,000 funding for Mind and local Minds to deliver new services created using Service Design.