Overview

If you’re a Housing provider who wants to improve your customer experience you’ve come to the right place. We love working with organisations who care about the people who use and deliver their services.

We recognise many of the challenges faced by housing organisations today. The pressure to deliver and the fast-changing external environment. Don’t worry. We relish solving complex problems.

Snook has been helping housing providers transform their service for years. From helping to design purpose-built homes for at-risk young people, to recent work exploring the ways to future proof housing services for tenants’ changing needs. 

These projects also involved upskilling the teams we worked with, in user-centred design whilst moving towards net-zero by designing with the planet in mind.   

If you’re interested in building sustainable services from the outside-in that benefit customers and create better jobs, get in touch.

We’ve designed a modular system of training that’s designed to work like building blocks. 

You can start with a free taster, to find out exactly how service design can help your organisation, and follow it with other modules to develop practical skills and start putting them into practice. 

Free Taster sessions for the curious

1. Intro to Service Design

Sign up for a one-hour lunchtime session where you can dip your toe in the water and find out more about how service design can transform your housing business. 

Next date: Coming soon

2. Tools for listening

All good design starts by listening to the people who use what you design. Learn how to listen to residents and front line staff in a way that will give you actionable insights. This will help you stay ahead of the new regulation that’s coming.

This will cover:

• Segmenting customers for research
• Developing a discussion guide
• Interview techniques
• Synthesis of research data

We’ll post an Eventbrite link soon. In the meantime, contact us to register your interest. 

Workshops 

We have a range of workshops that cover the elements you need to train your teams in service design.  This is a lasting investment that will pay off for years to come as you watch your services improve.

Our workshops are 2-hour, hands-on sessions for teams who want to learn practical tools to improve services and put them to use right away. Each session will introduce a different tool, focusing on how and why to use it in the housing sector. 

• Using journey maps to understand and improve your residents’ experience 
• Using blueprints to move beyond process and look at the whole service 
• Creating personas to understand your residents’ experience

Sprinting with Snook

In our three day sprints, we’ll help guide your team through various service design practices. We’ll focus on issues identified by your team beforehand so we can tailor the offer to your needs. 

We can work with you to solve problems your customers are experiencing and to spot opportunities. We’ll develop a programme of activities using service design tools to help you problem-solve in a way that will deliver sustainable solutions. Teams will also be able to apply their skills to other issues in the future. 

The aim of sprints is to learn by doing. We’ll support you through creating and using different tools to tackle challenges and identify opportunities in your organisation as you learn. 

Who are these for?

Anyone involved in housing who wants to learn how to better understand and act on the needs of tenants. 

Anyone who’s looking for support with new requirements for housing providers to create more meaningful relationships with their tenants. We’ll also cover how to meet the need to move towards net zero.

What software or tools do you need?

The course is run remotely via Zoom. Bring pen and paper for sketching or taking notes.

The training material will be sent to you afterwards.

Who will you learn with?

Olivia Holbrook

Olivia is a senior service designer here at Snook. She has extensive experience working with organisations, including housing providers. She helps organisations to address challenges whilst upskilling their teams at the same time. She has been working closely with the housing consultant, John Baldwin (ex Metropolitan Thames Valley and Notting Hill Housing Trust) to develop our offer in this sector.

Tash Willcocks  

Tash is the Head of Learning at Snook, if you want to talk training talk to Tash. She trains Snook staff in the latest design techniques as well as learning from them in turn. Every client and project we have at Snook broadens our understanding of service design and we love to share this learning. 

Previous to working at Snook, Tash was the Director of Masters at Hyper Island, an international creative business school. She also talks at conferences and events globally like TedX MCR, Refresh Rocks Estonia, Creative Mornings Gothenburg & for HEC in San Francisco. 

Val Mitchell

As Snook’s academic training lead, Val helps Tash design and deliver learning sessions for clients and Snook staff. Val is an experienced design researcher and is on partial secondment from Loughborough University where she leads the User Experience and Service Design Masters programme.