When we started working in this project, we had a history of different life-event oriented services available in Portugal (one-stop service desks for new-born citizens, marriage, purchasing a house and even for company establishment). At the same time, 9 years ago, we started offering a one-stop service that combined services from registry with taxes, for death certificates to inheritances. We felt that the project needed to evolve to include more services, better integration, more information available and a more humane approach. Also, citizen expectations have become more demanding, and this service has to know the citizen better at a fragile time.

For research and user feedback, we started by developing an experimental approach using service design tools to gather information about the current different processes available to citizens. This innovative process of deep prior research, including investigation, analytics, co-creation design and prototyping with citizens, took 3 months.

In mid-April 2017, the Cabinet of the Ministry of Justice gathered all the information from the service design, and wrote a final report. This report had a detailed analysis on the actions taken, the Citizens’ opinion, the attendants’ opinions and problems, and the first proposal of priorities for the final solution, based in the experience of the prototype, the co-creation workshop, and the user cases from the journey maps (from a total of 75 interviews).
We then created full communications materials to explain the methodology, including video, even press articles to help spread this good practice in Public Administration. The second phase of this project (the final solution) is currently under development, and fully scoped within the lessons obtained by the experimentation phase.

The partnership with the LABX, Portuguese Experimentation Lab provided techniques, support, evaluation materials. All the Government and Public Administration areas intervened with ideas, and with a fast and agile response. Two academic research centres with strong journey map knowledge, provided better information accuracy. Private data analytics specialists, with knowledge in user online and offline behaviour provided information about current demand and where online priorities should be set.

Being a user-driven project, the citizen was in the centre of the whole project: interviews at different stages of the project that resulted in detailed journey maps that described both the flow but also their opinion on the service, experience and mindset at the time. For stakeholders, they were invited during co-creation to help design and create a new experience. The civil servants that were also interviewed in creating the prototype, both for daily feedback and for their final remarks.

With this project we have achieved:
- Better user feedback from current services
- Good service evaluation from the prototype interviews: 4,55 (1-5 scale);
- Good evaluation from the co-creation workshops, where public servants that came from small towns, like Resende, where invited to be part of the solution: 4,8 (1-5 scale);
- User workflow time-oriented;
- Better definition of service priorities: technology, processes, regulation and psychological support from use case statistics and qualitative data;
- Definition of information materials required: single and clear guides with use-cases;
-online costs simulator; and
- language simplification.

Initially there was some quite understandable scepticism about the methodology.
That was answered with:
- Full alignment of key stakeholders, confirmed through the regular project meetings that reminded about the scope and goals of the project;
- Close collaboration with the whole project team, including LABX team, co-creation participants, researchers and specially the public attendants at the prototype (daily debriefing for fast solving issues in time for the next day, so that the prototype would be improved daily);
- Team training for the prototype on best practices for service, considering the Death and Bereavement subject. Training was conducted by AMA – Agency for Public Services Modernisation that manages the network of one-stop-shops. With a strong knowledge on Service, and being “external to the team”, it was not considered by the team as one entity trying to lecture another.

You must be willing to take some time for experimentation and research as first step for a public project; You have to choose the right experimentation tools. That’s why it is important to have good professionals in a team such as LABX;
Teams must be motivated – this is done by explaining the goals and scope (that can be different from the final solution).
Nurture opinions and conversations.
Ask for stakeholders’ feedback: at workshops, prototyping, and at the end of the project. It will contribute to team motivation.
Produce conclusions, based in all data collected that will allow decision-making.
Good project management: keep track of scope, deadlines, obstacles, regular meetings, documentation. Communication: during the project to all the stakeholders but also after, to better promote methodology.

The methodology used by the Death and Bereavement Prototyping can be replicated in different realities with the right adjustments and tools:
- To problem-oriented and “life” event services. There are several life-events that can be addressed as a one-stop physical or an online integrated solution;
- Using a research methodology to research and test before and gather conclusions prior to the final service;
- Using analytics as a source of information. Web analytics provide a strong knowledge on user behaviour by tracking searches, exit pages, completion rates or even keyword; rating, that can be useful for better pages with clear texts, comprehensible goals and expected page behaviour;
- Using blueprint tools to track the flow. The blueprints used in the prototype phase allowed the team and service attendants to understand better the entire citizen flow prior to the prototype start, but also the required process back office.

We learned more about data analysis both for in-store demand and for online behaviour. We learned how to execute prototyping operation in less than two weeks.
Proximity – we had to work closely with all the teams. We were continuously questioning and in search for improvement. We learned that we needed top down sponsorship and empowerment from all the stakeholders. We used a User-driven methodology, mapping use-cases to define priorities. We needed openness for team to Design above constraints (IT, regulations, costs, etc).