Nic Ward

Nic is a service design specialist who helps senior leaders, managers and operational teams to understand and adopt a service-oriented approach to change and transformation.

A natural collaborator, Nic is experienced in workshop design and facilitation, mapping and visualising service experiences, and creating clear narratives for change. He has written about the use of common service patterns in government, and plays an active role in UK government design and digital community events.

At Public Digital Nic leads on user-centred service design, research and co-design activities. He has also run maturity assessments and capability building beacons with a diverse range of clients. He recently supported the newly formed Barbados Government GovTech team to build internal user-centred design capability, whilst co-designing, prototyping and testing improved online user journeys for their national Registrations services, based around a Digital Public Goods (DPG) platform. In PD's work with the UK Financial Conduct Authority, Nic led a beacon project supporting the successful delivery of an AI exemplar, and co-created a playbook to help teams across the organisation to adopt more agile ways of working. 

Nic has also worked with clients including addiction charity Change Grow Live (CGL), the Government of Nova Scotia, and Dorset Council.

Previously Nic led on service design and UCD strategy at Essex County Council, one of the UK's largest local authorities. There he helped to establish and create the conditions for an in-house team of over 20 design and digital specialists.