Sam Villis

An overview of an interaction with dental services as a parent with a child with SEND, this overview describes how the service works and uses service design principles to make suggestions for improvement

A blog post that I wrote about the task of learning the new skill and craft of crochet, and about the experience of using craft to help in dealing with the grief of losing a loved one.

An unpacking of a strange service encounter when parking in a multi-story car park. Using the iceberg model of systems thinking to break down the problem and learn about this issue in more detail.

An unpacking of a strange service encounter where I received 4 letters on the same day from the same organisation. Using ‘Full stack service design’ to break down the problem.

In 2024 I undertook Service Design training with Experience Haus, this included working on a client project with Green Tomato a grocery service based in Leicester.

The journey of selling with Vinted, and the trials and tribulations of sending via Yodel. Through this investigation I hope to develop some ideas to address the issues identified.

For two years I regularly held space to unblock team issues and provide a space where people could ask questions or raise issues in a safe, peer-supported environment. This post outlines what I learned.

In this blog post, inspired by the work of Giles Turnbull I provide suggestions for collecting and curating project assets to enable ‘open’ working practices for a team to ensure that the story of work can be told effectively.

A write up of what I learned from attending the SDinGov conference in Edinburgh in September 2022. This includes themes of equity, behaviour change, implementing design maturity and more.

This tongue in cheek blog post uses the standard format of the TV show The Apprentice to discuss what makes a successful self-managing team.

In 2021 I undertook training with Design Dissolve (part of Franklin University Switzerland) in Systems thinking. This blog post showcases our final project for the first module, an investigation of how services are delivered in Government collaboration with Ben Briggs from the Government of New Zealand.

In 2021 I undertook training to learn the basics of coaching with the MOE Foundation. This blog post includes details of what I learned, otherwise known as my Case History. This write up formed the final part of my accreditation.

In September 2020 on World Suicide prevention day I ran an online event featuring 14 speakers on the subject of Zero Suicide. I led a small volunteer team of 6 people and over 900 people signed up to attend. This blog post documents what I learned by running the event.

In 2020 I documented everything I read across the year to hold myself accountable and to learn more. This culminated in a publicly accessible resource that is available to anyone with an interested in change, service design and many other themes.

In this weeknote I document my experiences of attending and speaking at the SDinGov conference in Edinburgh. I was speaking on the theme of storytelling. Themes of sessions I attended included power and privilege, ethics and prototyping operating models.

Organisations are increasingly seeking to make better use of their staff resources, particularly through staff networks. This study consolidated a view of the types of network organisations I had observed and how leaders might work with them to deliver more.

This weeknote documents delivering agile and digital transformation training with leaders from Local Government. This training was attended by our now Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. This weeknote also includes details of my first time speaking at Service Design in Government conference.

My most popular and enduring blog post, this provides people new to weeknoting with an overview of styles they could consider using to get started. It has been widely shared and is still used by those new to this way of working.

Developed for my then team, I documented my early experiences with sketchnoting and working on ways to communicate information in different formats. I went on to deliver workshops introducing people to sketchnoting.

As part of Cabinet Office’s Policy School I was set a policy and service area question to address. With a small group we developed a service concept / policy concept to support youth engagement. This culminated in a presentation to Civil Service Senior Leaders f which my team’s work was awarded the pitch.

As part of Cabinet office’s Policy School I was able to meet with residents and service users from across the borough of Barking and Dagenham, this blog post describes day 2 of the training programme.

This post documents my work on an organisational Accelerator scheme, what I learned from undertaking a listening exercise with staff networks and how I changed my approach to solving an issue on that basis.

Developing skills in product and user centred design through this in-person course at the Government Digital Academy in Leeds, April 2017.

Cementing my understanding of UX fundamentals through this in-person course at the General Assembly offices in London, January 2017.