thinkpublic produce a new animation, Prototyping made simple, to show public services how they can use prototyping to quickly and cheaply develop and test new services. Although a well-established part of service design, prototyping has not been widely applied to the design of public services.
NESTA believes that prototyping could be part of a strong approach to developing new services that deliver better outcomes for less money. Prototyping made simple offers a fun and creative way for public service professionals to learn about the contribution prototyping can make to tackling the big social challenges. At present, public services face two main challenges. Faced with deep budget reductions, they must find new ways to do more with less. Longer term, the challenge is to radically redesign public services to meet rising citizen expectations and needs. By offering a quick and cheap way of developing and testing new ideas, prototyping gives public services the power to respond innovatively to both of these challenges.