The Service Design Studio is a unit within the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer. We support service improvement efforts at the City of Philadelphia.

As a team of design research and service design practitioners, we believe:

• Service access is a social justice issue.
• Design is never neutral.
• The people closest to a policy or service challenge should inform its design.

We address these beliefs by:

• Doing fieldwork to understand shared needs, barriers to delivery, and opportunities for improvement.
• Collaborating with residents and City staff to design policies and services that work for people.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of our solutions before broad implementation.
• Championing ethical and data-driven design practices.
• Teaching colleagues design methods for use in their work.