Specialist Bristol design firm Mace & Menter has won a competitive tender to work with the NHS on a series of projects to adapt and innovate health services in the South West.
The work will support NHS Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) ongoing drive to design more effective and inclusive services around the needs of people in the region. 
Mace & Menter specialises in service design and user experience for complex services. The team works with organisations – such as the Cabinet Office, DCMS, Policy Lab, Scope and the V&A – that want to significantly improve the way people experience their services.
The Mace & Menter team will initially run research and digital concepting work for the CCG, and North Somerset Council to help them improve the Local Offer website for parents and carers with children with special or additional needs and disabilities.
Alongside this, Mace & Menter will also show ways the service could be improved through concepts, storyboards and prototypes.
Mace & Menter co-founder and managing director Sam Menter, pictured, said: “Our research project will ultimately feed into a business case for development and improvements to the existing services across the South West region. 
“The first phase will help increase communication, awareness and information available to parents and carers in North Somerset.
“We have extensive experience running public sector service design projects, upskilling internal teams and embedding a people-centred mindset.
“Our combined experience of design for services, design and the built environment make us a great fit for the NHS and local government.”
Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire CCG insights and engagement manager Ben Carlson-Davies said it needed a partner with deep experience in service design and user research to bring to life human-centred design, and to help understand how we can apply that in the wider health and care system.
“We wanted someone who could help us benchmark our skills and upskill the team. Mace & Menter stood out as the strongest candidate with lots of experience in working with public sector teams,” he said.
“They also really took the time to understand the business needs, and actively challenged us about our own capabilities and where we want to be in the future.”
Mace & Menter combine behavioural insight – from primary research – with interaction, mobile and web design expertise to create evidence-driven digital services.
The approach provides evidence to fuel innovation, mitigate risk and deliver exceptional experiences.
Last year the firm opened a purpose-built user research and user experience (UX) lab in the firm’s studio in the Arnolfini arts centre to enable product and service developers test their prototypes.
