The case for a design archive for digital services

Summary

Governments around the world are digitizing more of their services. The result is that the way people experience public services is increasingly through an app or a website. The hope is that this leads to a better experience for citizens while saving money in the process, but it carries with it an additional effect: as otherwise abstract government policies manifest themselves as pixels on citizen’s phones, small design choices can have big impacts on how people access and understand services.

A public archive of the user interfaces, journals and permissions for important digital services could act as a resource for researchers, journalists and others looking to understand the impacts of design changes on the public realm.