I'm founder and MD of Healthia (formerly Mace & Menter). We are an award-winning team that helps organisations transform through collaborative service design .Highlights of our work include:- Helping NHS 111 reduce urgent care footfall (Global Excellence in Health Research Award)- Redesigning the way people access mental health services (HSJ Award)- Evaluating the experience of people accessing their GPs- Running research in job centres across the UK for Policy Lab- Co-creating support services with and for disabled peopleThere are so many ways a service can unintentionally be made hard to use, confusing or ineffective for the people who need to access it that the chances of getting it right without involving users in the design process are slim to zero. When you consider the number of people accessing public services, you realise that even a small change to the way something works or is communicated, based on user insight, can make a service significantly more usable and useful for hundreds of thousands of people.User-centred design is essential because it can mean the difference between people using or abandoning a service.By involving users in the discovery process and throughout the design process we make sure the service is solving the right problems for the organisation and the users. Clear insight into user needs makes it possible to prioritise features and functionality so that budgets can be used effectively. We eliminate the risk of developing complex and expensive functionality that has little value to the users.Public and commercial services need to work for everyone and testing designs with people with low digital skills or accessibility needs, means we can design services that do this. User centred design means we think about all users, not just people who are confident with technology and have the latest kit.If you share this mindset, I'd love to connect or hear about some of the challenges you face: sam@macementer.com