BE SIMPLE, BE RELEVENT

A study out this week confirms at least two things worth caring about when you want to do public engagement:

1) The top reason people choose to engage is because the topic is of personal interest to them. Not because it is of interest to you and not because you say it is important. They engage when it's something they care about. Sixty five per cent of people surveyed said they would only participate if the issue had a direct impact on them or their family. Not that they might be more likely to, but that they would only participate if they saw a direct connection to their lives. Build the bridge.

2) Fully 71 per cent said they would be more likely to participate if it was easy and convenient to do so. Easy and convenient for them, not you. And easy and convenient probably doesn't mean requiring me to set up an account for an online consultation or attend a meeting during work hours. Faced with the choice of making it easier for them or making it easier for you, choose them. Always.

This shouldn't be news. This shouldn't be rocket science. It's not. We're just too lazy to do it right sometimes, aren't we?

WHEN ENGAGEMENT ISN'T ENGAGING

Engagement isn't about the transactions, but the transactions - the interactions between me and you - will make or break it. Here are three types that will break it:

1. Interactions that require me to do things with no apparent value. The value may be apparent to you, but if it's not obvious to me then at least explain it. Because if I don't see the value then the interaction is just making my life more complicated. We all crave simplicity and we distrust more complicated.
2. Interactions that keep me from doing the useful thing I wanted you to help me with or, even worse, the useful thing you promised you would help me with. Jumping through hoops should only happen in the circus, and even then it is voluntary.
3. Interactions that leave me in the dark rather than building understanding. We all like to learn and discover and understand. We never like to feel stupid.

The interactions you offer should do the opposite of these things - offer me something of value (whether that's a product or a service or a relationship or a voice), make my life simpler or help me understand. Whatever your thing is, it probably promises to do at least one of these. Nothing about my relationship with you should undermine that.

WHAT DO WE WANT PEOPLE TO FEEL?

I can't stop watching it. Every couple days, it lures me back. It's Apple's recently released video about their approach to design. I'm not an Apple fanatic, but I am fascinated by the company's design ethic - especially the principle of simplicity (see Ken Segall's excellent book for more on that). The video both articulates and embodies those things, but that's not why I keep coming back to it.

I keep watching it because I can't help but wonder what would happen if we applied the same approach where I work in government. I'd like to try to apply almost everything set out by Apple in this video to the design of public services. The tension between abundance and choice. Simplification. Intention. But in particular, I'd like to see what happens if we start by asking what we want people to feel?

That may sound ridiculous because public services aren't about feelings. They're about compliance and behaviours and regulations and actions. That's how we typically design them - by asking what we want people to do or not do (or, even worse, what we want or need from them). So if the idea of starting with how we want people to feel seems absurd, more than anything that may just demonstrate how wide the gap is between what we do and could do. Public services don't inspire delight or connection or surprise. But does that mean they couldn't? Maybe if they did they'd be better at also inspiring the desired action or behaviour or compliance.