Lou Downe
- Founder & Director
- United Kingdom
- Member since 2020
Lou Downe is the ex-director of design for the UK government and author of ‘Good Services How to Design Services That work’
During their time in the UK government, Lou established the cross-government standards for good services and founded the discipline of service design, building a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers across government.
Lou was nominated as one of the top 50 creative leaders in the UK in 2016 and one of the world's 100 most influential leaders in digital government in 2018 and is a passionate believer in the role of design to create a world which benefits everyone.
They now train 100s of designers to design and deliver great services.
Achievements:
- Author of the bestselling book on Service Design, Good Services
- Founded the practice of service design in government
- Authored the UK government's strategy for service design within the Government Transformation Strategy
- Founded a £5M programme of teams working on service transformation across government; including the Performance Platform, Service Manual & Service Toolkit, design patterns, GOV.UK Frontend, accessibility and inclusion, cross government service design and policy and delivery training
- Created the public sector’s first ever Design System for the UK government design community to share and contribute to patterns
- Established and grew a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers working on services across government
- Re-wrote the government’s Service Standard in collaboration with departments to reflect true end-to-end service design and emerging technologies.
- Established an international government design consortium working to set global standards for country-critical services such as immigration and healthcare. Hosting the first international conference for government designers with over 250 designers form 52 countries
- Established a design leadership network and recruited 12 heads of design to lead key delivery departments in government
- Created a long-term support service to enable government to restructure around services sustainably
- Created a formal training and apprenticeship scheme to enable designers to join the government design community across the UK leading to a 500% growth in the Government design community in 2 years
Contact Lou.
