Friday service design blog
Welcome to the Reykjavík service design Friday 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 will share project updates with you every Friday for the duration of the project.
Do you know what you don't know?
March 27, 2026
This week, we focused on digging deeper into the project and building a clearer picture of the wide variety of work happening across the Department of Welfare. We met with staff who walked us through several key areas, including home support procedures, upcoming changes to the services, and vital practical details.
The week didn't go entirely to plan, however, as several scheduled interviews and meetings with older adults in Reykjavík fell through. Yesterday's weather certainly didn't help; however, on Wednesday we attended the Icelandic Association of Local Authorities' digital conference, where service design team leader Andri discussed the importance of speaking directly with service users. He delivered an excellent presentation, stressing the value of staying human, talking to the people who actually use the services, and remaining honest about how much we have yet to learn. That is exactly what we hope to convey through this blog.
When the weather puts a stop to things…
…then we find other opportunities. We spent yesterday reviewing our collected data and beginning our first round of thematic analysis. This exercise helped us identify emerging patterns, surface new questions, and pinpoint where we still need to gather information.
But what does starting a thematic analysis actually entail?
The goal is to:
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Define the core needs of service users
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Turn challenges into opportunities
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Find focus
We accomplish this by "re-listening" to our data. What does that mean?
Think of it this way, we break the process into three parts:
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What do we need to know? We answer this through service user interviews, conversations with staff and specialists, and our broader recent research. This approach yields our data: what people say and what they do.
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What does it mean? We determine this through thematic analysis, identifying patterns in behavior and thought. This process provides crucial insight and a much clearer sense of genuine needs.
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What are we going to do? We address this by transforming our newly gained insights into actionable opportunities. What can we do, and what does that mean for the project? From there, we can prioritize based on potential impact.
Human nature often drives us to prioritize too early, but taking the time to work through every step is vital to truly understanding the data. We might be specialists, but we cannot anticipate true needs in advance. As Andri noted in his talk: we don't know what we don't know.
For example:
❌ Jónía said she wanted a website, so we are going to build a website.
✅ Most service users, like Jónína, experience a lack of clarity and want to know the next step to reach their goal.
Our aim is to find patterns in the collected data and define what they mean and why they matter.
We also rely on various tools to support further definition, including affinity maps, archetypes, and user journey maps. We will share more about those when the time comes. All of this is available in our toolkit, which you can access here!
We will be off next Friday for Good Friday, but we look forward to picking things back up after Easter!
Your friends in service design 💛
Let's be human!
March 20, 2026
Let me introduce you to Guðrún. Guðrún is an 87-year-old woman who lives alone. Her husband, Hafsteinn, passed away eight years ago. Guðrún and Hafsteinn have one daughter, Eydís, who is 55. Eydís works as a head of division at a local company and has three sons of her own, aged from 11 to 19.
Guðrún has always been healthy, active, and sociable—apart from back pain she has endured since a car accident when Eydís was a child.
She has attended physical therapy ever since, which largely keeps the pain under control. In recent years, however, her body has started showing its age.
Guðrún has always kept a warm, welcoming home, and that remains just as vital to her today.
One thing leads to another...
With visitors expected over the weekend, Guðrún spends Thursday morning vacuuming and cleaning her house. The exertion leaves her exhausted and aching.
She lacks the energy to visit the store or cook a proper dinner. Still hurting and underfed, she sleeps poorly that night. After such a rough night, she feels too unwell to attend her Friday morning physical therapy appointment.
Skipping physical therapy takes its toll as the day progresses and her back pain worsens—but Guðrún, always a gracious host, pushes through to bake a cake for Saturday's gathering. Aching and running on fumes, she feels entirely drained after baking and manages only another light dinner. Once again, she tosses and turns through the night.
Saturday arrives, with guests expected that afternoon. She feels exhausted, in pain, and far from her best. Calling her daughter Eydís to cancel the gathering, she explains she simply doesn't feel well enough. Guðrún stays inside and misses seeing her family over the weekend. Beyond the physical pain, she feels disappointed and isolated.
Now let's fast-forward. Guðrún has applied for home support services from the City. Once again, she invites people over for Saturday. It's Thursday. Monika, a home support worker, arrives at noon. They sit together at the kitchen table to discuss Guðrún's upcoming plans.
Guðrún mentions expecting weekend guests and wanting the house to look nice. She also notes her plan to bake a cake. Today's visit is scheduled as a social check-in, and Guðrún isn't due for a cleaning until next week. Even so, Monika suggests they tidy up slightly together; she tackles the floors while Guðrún handles some light dusting.
As they work, they chat about their shared love for an ongoing handball tournament and the Icelandic team's performance. Afterward, Monika sits down to help Guðrún draft a shopping list, noticing she only jotted down ingredients for a pavlova without considering dinner.
Monika's shift is nearly over, but before leaving, she offers to help Guðrún order grocery delivery through the Króna app. Guðrún is delighted. She feels no pain. The house is clean, the fridge is stocked, and she retains the energy to care for herself. Her family visits on Saturday, and the day ends with everyone settled on the sofa, watching handball and enjoying grandma's pavlova.
A lifeline
Guðrún calls this day her lifeline. For her, this wasn't just a service; it was a person going the extra mile to do slightly more than the checklist required, which made all the difference.
But things don't always work out this way.
We know our services don't always reach this level. Pressures and staffing shortages exist, but so do countless opportunities to improve.
The services we provide matter deeply, but also fluid. It reaches people when they're vulnerable, which is exactly why we must remain human.
The sandwich generation
This week, we focused on listening and understanding.
We sat with people who use home care services, discussing their experiences, needs, and the barriers they face. We identified what works and what doesn't.
- Conversations with immediate family members
What does their reality look like? Where are the pain points? What do they most need to preserve? We heard from immediate family members who described themselves as part of the sandwich generation—middle-aged people, usually women, who work full time, raise children, and simultaneously care for aging or ailing parents. They handle everything from phone calls and medication management to doctor visits, shopping, cleaning, and emotional support—and they are burning out. They feel guilty whether at home or at work.
- Conversations with nonprofit organizations
We spoke with nonprofit organizations that regularly help a service user and their immediate family members navigate City services, including home support, providing a valuable outside perspective on how the system looks from their vantage point.
- Collaborating with those who work alongside the system
Over coffee, we sat down with Finnur and Hanna, who design and run Dala Care, getting a real look into their research, technology, perceived opportunities, and vision for the future.
All of this helps us see the bigger picture. Alongside stories of excellent service, we hear what needs to change. This feedback proves invaluable.
One seed can grow into a forest
We recently heard about a telecommunications company where a live chat agent ended up ordering a pizza for a customer. The gesture had nothing to do with their job description and cost the company around 4,000 króna, but the story made headlines and generated more goodwill than any marketing campaign could buy.
Though we are a public institution with no profit motive, the same principle applies. One extra step, good deed, right decision, or spare minute can build trust, safety, and quality that far outweigh the cost.
Days like the one Guðrún shared with Monika shape the bigger picture. Such seeds can transform an experience, a culture, and even the system itself.
Thank you for reading this week's blog post. We look forward to sharing our ongoing work with you—along with promising improvements for people like Guðrún, Eydís, and Monika.
Your friends in service design 💛
"No… I honestly have no idea what the service actually involves.“
March 13, 2026
It's been a busy but rewarding week as we continue meeting with services staff.
Early themes are taking shape, and it's always fascinating to see what surfaces when so many different parties share their experiences.
The accompanying image features quotes from the interviews.
What's emerging
Several challenges are emerging from the interviews, including:
- confusion about what the service actually entails
- unclear information flow and disjointed systems
- manual, time-consuming processes
- potential gaps when transferring information between parties
- service users lacking clarity on where their cases stand
- and inconsistent internal practices
These findings are preliminary, however—we still need to analyze them thoroughly and compare them against other data and additional interviews.
Conversations with service users and immediate family
We have also started interviewing service users and their immediate family members. This diverse group has varying needs and different reasons for using the services, so reaching certain members requires extra time and effort.
Interviews will continue over the coming weeks. If you know someone who wants to share their experience, they are welcome to reach out at thjonustuhonnun@reykjavik.is 🧡
Post-it notes and Miro energy
Our service design methodology begins with a discovery phase. During this stage, we embrace all kinds of information related to the challenge at hand. This approach provides insights we might otherwise miss before narrowing our focus.
Right now, we are:
- interviewing service users and staff
- reviewing existing data
- consulting with other institutions and municipalities
- exploring solutions from other cities
- mapping our insights in Miro and on the wall with Post-it notes
While the process can get a little messy at times, this step is essential to ensure we solve the right problem when designing the service itself.
Anyone interested can learn more about this process in our toolbox. The toolbox covers the various phases of service design and provides access to canvases and other tools.
Thanks for reading—see you back here next Friday!
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 💛