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Experimenting with service patterns

Service patterns are a structured way of describing repeatable user tasks that can be combined to build or shape end-to-end services.

They can be used to help organisations understand the services they offer and provide guidance on how to build new services.

MOJ is collaborating with other UK government departments to explore the potential benefits of service patterns.

Published work

A cross-government working group has published 2 ‘proof of concepts’ for service patterns that could work across the UK public sector. You can view them and provide feedback:

Apply service pattern

Appointments service pattern

The parts of a service pattern

We think service patterns should be:

  • based on repeatable tasks that users complete
  • reusable to encourage consistency
  • modular so that they can be combined to create complete services
  • designed for multiple channels like offline services

Each service pattern entry will contain guidance on how to implement the service pattern in a consistent way across our services.

Service pattern information might include:

  • steps and tasks
  • common user and business needs
  • scenario mapping of happy and unhappy paths
  • recommended digital components and patterns
  • case studies
Patterns should not replace design work. Instead, they’re a starting point to accelerate design and encourage consistency. Designers still need to validate or adapt the pattern for their specific needs.

Defining our service patterns

We’ve identified 9 potential service patterns at MOJ:

  • Record
  • Understand
  • Inform
  • Request
  • Apply
  • Book
  • Evaluate
  • Decide
  • Pay

This list may change.

Get involved

You can contact the MOJ team at ServicePatterns@justice.gov.uk to get involved or find out more about our work.

We welcome feedback from everyone, including from people outside MOJ.