Lost in translation: Policing, service design and speaking human

Policing is a high-tempo, hierarchical environment where decisions move fast, and processes exist for good reasons. It is also an environment where change is traditionally done to officers rather than with them, where there is little space for reflection, and where the language and methods of service design can feel not just unfamiliar but actively at odds with how the job works. 

This talk draws on direct experience of working at that interface — as police officers embedded in service design projects to explore what democratising design actually looks like when the organisation has a rank structure, a legal framework, and a strong occupational culture pulling in the other direction. 

The central argument is that the gap between policing and service design is not primarily a skills gap — it's a translation problem. Service designers and police officers are trying to solve the same problems, but they use different language, operate at different speeds, and have very different relationships with uncertainty and ambiguity. Getting to shared understanding requires someone willing to stand in the middle and translate — not just vocabulary, but mindset. 

The talk will draw on a major project redesigning serious and complex investigations and safeguarding services in Scotland. It illustrates where translation worked, where it broke down, and what the conditions were that made the difference. It will include an opportunity for participants to share their own experiences of working across similar cultural divides.

Participant Takeaways:

• An honest, front-line account of what it feels like to introduce service design into a challenging organisational culture 

• A practical translation framework for working across the divide between process-driven and user-centred ways of working 

• Specific examples of where service design language needed to change and where policing assumptions needed to change for collaboration to work 

• A clearer sense of what conditions need to be in place for officers and designers to work together effectively