Friday service design blog
This Friday civic design blog from Reykjavík is about improving home support and digital solutions for seniors by analyzing their needs and those of their immediate family, sharing insights into our work process, and fostering human, clear, and accessible services that respect the rights and wishes of older adults.
Coffee at North Center
March 06, 2026
This week has been all about launching service user interviews and deepening our understanding of how the process actually works, both from the staff's perspective and those who use the services.
This week's tasks:
- Talked with home care services staff
- Interviewed geriatric affairs phone advisor
- Analyzed data
Talked with home care services staff
Our first interviews this week were with service staff, including home support team leaders. These conversations gave us better insight into:
- how they work day to day
- what processes and systems they rely on
- what challenges and opportunities they see in the current application and assessment process
We also watched them work in the systems they use, which gave us deeper understanding than interviews alone could provide. Seeing the flow in real time helped us understand where bottlenecks occur in the process.
Interviewed geriatric affairs phone advisor
We also had a very useful conversation with a geriatric affairs phone advisor. She gave us a clear picture of:
- the main questions that come in
- what information is unclear for service users
- what support people need before they decide to apply
- what parts of the process people find especially hard to understand
This insight is valuable since phone advisors are often people's first point of contact with the service.
Analyzed data
We're analyzing all these interviews as we go using Miro. There we're collecting:
- pain points
- opportunities
- the process as it is today...
- ...and how it could be better!
Next on our agenda is mapping the process and developing suggestions for improved and more efficient solutions.
Would you like to participate in an interview?
We're still looking for service users and/or immediate family who have:
- recently applied for home support
- are considering applying and want to share what's holding them back
The goal is to get a broad overview of people's experiences, both those who have entered the system and those still at square one.
We look forward to continuing to process this data and sharing project progress with you in our next blog post.
Problems, problems, problems…
February 27, 2026
This week, we focused primarily on mapping the project, understanding its scope better, and identifying the challenges we need to solve.
This step has been both important and highly insightful — especially to ensure we have the correct focus from the beginning.
Service design follows specific steps, and we're currently at this stage (see image of the process).
Core of the challenge
Right now, users — both older adults and their family members — struggle because they don't have a clear overview of the process, the service, or the status of their cases. The main issues we see are:
- The application form on My Pages is too open-ended, which leads to incomplete applications.
- Too many applications unnecessarily go to meetings, which increases the workload on staff.
- Work practices within home care services aren't standardized, for example in assessments and information sharing.
- Staff don't have a complete overview and must spend a lot of time gathering information that should be easily available.
These issues form the foundation for our upcoming work.
Workshop with owner group
We held a workshop with the owner group (owners are the people responsible for the service) where we went through two key components:
- Stakeholder mapping: stakeholders are individuals or organizational units with direct or indirect interest in the service.
- Knowledge mapping: what we know, what we think we know, and what we don't know.
This work helped us identify where the main gaps are and what information we specifically need to gather from the right users — both service users and staff.
We're now using these results to develop questionnaires for user interviews, where we've gained a clearer picture of what needs to be investigated and why.
Data from the service center
We've also started looking at data in collaboration with Reykjavík City's service center, particularly regarding phone calls related to the service. This data helps us see:
- What are people looking for?
- What questions are most common?
- Where uncertainty in the service process lies?
This will be useful in both analysis and design later.
We're looking for participants
We're now recruiting people for user interviews and have posted the following call to reach the right group:
Have you recently applied for home support services from Reykjavík City?
Whether you're a family member or service user, we're looking for people who have recently gone through the application process — please send us a message at thjonustuhonnun@reykjavik.is and we'll schedule time for a conversation.
The goal is to get diverse perspectives from people with real experience of the process.
We look forward to continuing to share the process and lessons learned with you in the coming weeks!
Images from the service design workshop
This Month's Focus: Seniors
February 20, 2026
Welcome to our first Friday service design blog!
Over the coming weeks, we'll take a deep dive into services and digital solutions for older adults in Reykjavík. First on our agenda is looking at home support and exploring how we can make services better for residents and their immediate family.
We're just getting started and still asking questions, analyzing needs and creating a shared understanding of what really needs to change. Instead of waiting until everything is finished, we want you to follow along with our process from day one.
Why a blog?
Because it's so fun! We want to start conversations, show you how we work, share what we learn and discuss the challenges we face.
When it comes to services for older adults, there's a lot at stake. Services must be clear, accessible, and built around the real needs of the people they serve. In discussions about digitalization, the voices of those affected sometimes get lost.
What can you expect?
- insight into the work behind the scenes
- conversations with residents and their immediate family
- what works well (and maybe what doesn't work so well)
- ideas and testing
- maybe jokes and humor, who knows!
All of this is part of creating services that are human, clear and simple. Services that respect the basic rights, needs and wishes of older adults.
Follow along on Fridays
We'll post new updates on Fridays throughout the project. If you're interested in services, geriatric affairs, digital solutions or just how public services are designed, you're in the right place. All suggestions are welcome. You can reach us at thjonustuhonnun@reykjavik.is.
We look forward to taking you along on this journey.
Your friends in service design 💛