Overview
Victoria GovJam 2024, a two-day service design jam focused on tackling public sector challenges. As part of a global initiative, this event brought together 40 participants to collaboratively prototype innovative solutions using human-centred design methodologies.
My Role & Contributions
As one of five service design and facilitation experts, I was responsible for:
- Project Management & Coordination: Collaborating with fellow organizers to design the structure, schedule, and participant experience for the jam.
- Facilitation: Guiding participants through the design thinking process, ensuring teams stayed focused, engaged, and experimental.
- Leading User Research Teams: Coaching teams on conducting interviews, observations, and field research to understand their problem aria.
- Workshop Design & Delivery: Running interactive exercises that helped participants reframe challenges, prototype ideas, and test assumptions.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Creating a space for public sector professionals, designers, and community members to co-design actionable service improvements.
The Event Experience
Hosted at theDock Centre for Social Innovation, Victoria GovJam provided an immersive, fast-paced environment where participants:
- Identified real-world public sector challenges
- Conducted rapid guerrilla user research and testing
- Created low-fidelity prototypes to explore solutions
- Delivered short-form presentations on their findings and ideas
The jam emphasized collaboration, iteration, and experimentation, mirroring the adaptive problem-solving required in consulting and service design roles.
Key Learnings & Impact
- Strong Project Management Enables Success: Careful planning, clear communication, and proactive problem-solving were critical to delivering a seamless event experience.
- Design Jams Foster Creative Problem-Solving: Participants, many of whom had never used service design methods, quickly adapted to the prototype-and-test mindset—a testament to the power of structured facilitation.
- User Research is Key to Public Sector Innovation: Teams that integrated direct user feedback into their designs developed more viable and impactful solutions.
- Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Drives Better Outcomes: With a mix of designers, public servants, educators, and community leaders, the jam demonstrated the power of diverse perspectives in shaping equitable and effective services.
Alignment with Strategy & Service Design Leadership
This experience highlights my ability to:
- Lead and manage complex projects from planning to execution
- Facilitate high-impact, user-centered design workshops
- Lead teams through structured research and design processes
- Translate insights into actionable service improvements
- Work across disciplines to drive meaningful public sector innovation
Victoria GovJam 2024 reinforced my commitment to using human-centered design to improve public services. The skills I applied here: facilitation, research leadership, stakeholder engagement, and iterative design are the same skills that I bring to service design, research, consulting, and strategic projects.
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