Are we designing better services – or better lives?

9 October 2026: #SocialCareFuture co-convenor Tricia Nicoll reflects on a recent annual Service Design in Government conference (SDinGov) which explored how we design public services in ways that really work for people. Tricia asks whether the current debate on a National Care Service could end up creating something that feels like it has solved the problem of money and eligibility and fairness – in services – but which has failed to really understand our lives as humans.

A slide with a pink border and the Gloriously Ordinary Lives logo, posing the question: "Stop asking simply how people can have more of a say in designing services and start asking… What would it take? …for us all have the same chance to live Gloriously Ordinary Lives."

What if designing better social care meant looking beyond services altogether? In the latest Gloriously Ordinary Sundays blog, #SocialCareFuture co-convenor Tricia Nicoll explores the limitations of “user-centred design” and the idea that people’s lives can be neatly reduced to needs that services can meet.

As political momentum builds around a potential National Care Service, she argues that we must start with a bigger question: what would it take for us all to have the same chance to live gloriously ordinary lives?

Read Tricia’s blog here.

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