City Makers

The DMC guides the adoption of the City Makers methodology– a design-thinking approach aimed at improving the customer experience of shared services provided across several government entities and applying innovative design techniques and solutions to attain service excellence. Breaking down barriers between government entities, the City Makers methodology enables the simulation of a collaborative and holistic customer centric approach within government services. The methodology branches into five core stages, namely

Preparation for Change: begins with the discovery of a challenge or identifying an opportunity in a service and planning all the initial requirements to address it. The priority services are determined in cooperation with the Dubai Model Centre.

The “Exploration and Empathy” phase: It revolves around investing the necessary time and efforts to learn more about the background and context of the service under study. This is applied through exploration and gathering information sources in order to better understand the service and the people affected by it or influencing it better to contribute to innovation and development. Initial ideas, and during this stage the customer journey is mapped.

Idea Generation and Testing: preliminary ideas are generated with the intention of presenting concrete and ideal solutions extracted from a list of viable solutions that were assessed through developing prototypes and practical tests.

Case Presentation: After the completion of the initiatives’ prototypes; testing; and modifying outcomes to redesign the customer journey – the participating team will now have a clear idea of the initiative or set of initiatives that they want to implement to enhance the customer journey. At this stage, the team is required to present the full concept to the executive committee for the necessary approvals.

Implementation and Follow up: In cooperation with Dubai Model Center, the team works on implementing the necessary amendments to the customer journey by rolling out the approved initiatives and reporting on the progress of the service.