Chasing Squirrels & Herding Kittens: Accessible Service Design in Government

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) set out to improve services for people with disabilities through human-centred design with an Accessibility Design Challenge.

When we asked our clients about their experiences, we expected to hear about barriers with service touch points. But they told us so much more. Between policy, the built environment, websites and call centres, and with competing internal interests and a desire to chase shiny objects, keeping service design in scope was a challenge in itself.

OUR GUESTS

Adria Moore
@yesAdriaMoore

Adria is a Senior Service Designer and User Researcher working for the Government of Canada at IRCC. She applies her education in psychology and user experience design to bring a human-centred approach to designing government services, and recently led IRCC’s Accessibility Design Challenge, a multi-week project aimed at discovering and removing service barriers for the department’s clients with disabilities. Adria has presented at and hosted a government-wide Design Research Community of Practice, and is committed to sharing knowledge and growing capacity for human-centred design across her network of peers (preferably over a cup of good coffee).

Mitchell Wanless
@MitchellWanless

Mitchell is an Assistant Director in IRCC’s Service Insights and Experimentation Division, heading a diverse team of engineers, anthropologists and design thinkers. After many years trapped to the confines of the traditional policy process, he has been re-energised by the potential human centred design principles has for policy and program development and implementation. In a former life he worked as an addictions counsellor and youth worker.

Nataly Arar
@natalyarar

Nataly is a Senior Service Designer working for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Though her education was in Urban Planning and Urban Design, she left that world after accidentally finding out about human-centred design at one of Government of Canada’s Innovation Labs. Her obsession evolved into a lifestyle – she no longer had to pick between research, visualisation, people or design, and instantly began experimenting with tools and methods at every given opportunity. Since then, Nataly has had the opportunity to work for several departments across government, and has supported the establishment of 3 innovation labs.

OUR SPONSORS

We are extremely grateful to these organizations for their generous support of CapCHI and the local UX community.

DFFRNT
https://dffrnt.ca

We’re an exceptional team of highly experienced behavioural researchers and design strategists. We apply a fundamental understanding of human behaviour, strategic design and human-computer interaction to deliver product and service design value.

Jumping Elephants
https://www.jumpingelephants.ca

A full-service, consulting group based in Ottawa and specializing in user-centred solutions design and business process management for the public and private sector.

Becker-Carroll
https://becker-carroll.com

Our business and technical professionals are committed to helping private and public sector organizations adopt, utilize, and manage technology to deliver trusted, high-value digital services.

Human-Centred Design Institute
https://www.human-centred.ca

An interdisciplinary postgraduate program and research centre focused on evidence-based design strategy. We work with businesses, governments and not-for-profit organizations to provide students an industry-focused learning experience.