Martin Jordan

@martinjordan.com

3162 Followers 908 Following

Making services work better for all people—Head of Design & User Research at the German govt’s Digital Service, previously Head of #ServiceDesign at the UK’s Government Digital Service, int’l #GovDesign community co-lead, 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 ally martinjordan.com

A small white truck loading a laundry rack in front of a Neo-classicist building; on the side, the truck has a big pink foil applied saying: ‘Full Service’, in smaller type: “hygiene, mattresses, fire safety, work clothes, clean room, health & care — call us” with the web address CWS.com
Yellow slide with bold black type saying: “Service design is 10% design, 90% creating the conditions for design to happen”
Partial screenshot of a website displaying 4 open design positions: • Working student digital government in Potsdam • Communication designer in Hanover • User researcher role in Berlin • Content design role in Berlin
Screenshot of a business message on WhatsApp, saying: “Groupo Barchetti, phone number from Italy, not a contact, business account” — with 2 buttons: block and add; The message reads: “Good morning, Regarding your car rental reservation with Avis scheduled for tomorrow, 14 July 2026, we would like to inform you of the address of our new rental location in Ortisei: CARROZZERIA DA TONI Via Pontives 26/F 39040 Laion, Italy Your vehicle can be collected from this new location at the same time as originally booked. Thank you, The Avis Team”
Several people, mostly women, sitting in a modern office space with a big television behind them — it shows a poster that reads “Problem first, solution second” with the caption “We first understand the problem and then build the right thing”, one woman with curly hair is speaking, the others look at her
Partial screenshot of a website displaying 4 open design positions: • Specialist UX Research role in Berlin and elsewhere • User researcher role in Berlin • Content design role in Berlin
Public infrastructure is mostly legacy infrastructure.
A projected photograph on a canvas in a bright meeting room, it lists things that are service design - like a conversation, an email, a diagram, changing an API, applying for funding; in the background, there are people in a garden with a waterfront in the very back
Screenshot of a virtual whiteboard with coloured sections and various sticky notes, some headings are scoping, inclusion, wording
A split photographic composite, each with a seated audience in the foreground and a BIG bright pink LED wall in the background; on the left, 4 panellists are seated in front of it; on the right, a youngish man holding a sheet of paper with a QR code and a microphone stands in front of the LED wall
A hand holding a sheet with a big QR code, above it says: “DigitalService des Bundes is hiring: Content designer and user researchers”; in the background, there is a contemporary event space with lots of plants and a group of people standing around in summery clothes
Screenshot of a web browser displaying 2 overlaying pages with a feedback form and a footer of a German federal ministry website – all elements are coloured in orange
2 people, a man and a woman, presenting in front of a group of seated people in a modern meeting space with a wood-panelled wall and a large screen, which says in German: “8 – Each team finds suitable and scalable solutions for their problems”
A poster of the Delivery Principles in English; it shows 12 principles, all but one of which begin with ‘Each team’; in the bottom right-hand corner, the poster refers to the working methods described on the DigitalService website
Kollagen von Meldungen nebeneinander; links von Politico mit der Überschrift: „Europe muss sich zwischen KI und Klimazielen entscheiden, sagt die Datencenter-Lobby“, rechts von Wired mit der Überschrift: „Westantarktis hat viel zu wenig Eis“
Partial screenshot of a website displaying 5 open design positions: • Service designer role in Hannover • Communication designer focus with UX/UI in Hanover • Senior user researcher role in Berlin • User researcher role in Berlin • Content design role in Berlin
2 people, a man and a woman, in a modern workshop space with wooden panels and a massive screen showing a blue slide with the logo of Digital Service and a German headline translating to ‘Training for leadership at Digital Service’
A hand holding a book in warm grey shade; its title says ‘Creative Bureaucracy: Where next & how?’ With a long list of names of the contributors
3 people sitting on a stage in front of a massive screen saying “all together now: co-creating neighbourhoods” and their names: Floor Kuitert, Imandeep Kaur, and Christian Bason
A woman with darker skin tone in a denim outfit standing on stage in light flooded modern building in front of a large crowd, a massive screen behind her shows 3 posters with photographs, headlines says “neighbour public square”, “neighbourhood doughnut”, “neighbour transitions”
3 women and 1 man sitting on a stage inside a well-lit modernist building in a panel discussion on the topic “Designing in the age of uncertainty” — as a large screen behind them says, plus their names: “Floor Kuitert, Julia Watson, Bas van de Poel, Anab Jain
A man on stage in a modernist space with large windows with a large screen behind him displaying a quote: “The more digital our lives become the more we crave the physical.” Ilse Crawford — people are sitting in front of him, looking at him
A large TV set in the back of a modern building with people sitting in front of it; it lists 4 things each in 2 columns: “What helps us optimise: Analysis Planning Prediction Scaling What helps us navigate: Exploration Experimentation Sensemaking Learning”
A man in a red shirt talking in front of an audience, he holds a tablet computer and has a microphone attached, a big TV screen next to him that says ‘Future Days’ in large letters
A hand with a smart watch held up displaying the time: 08:02:58, in the back is classic 20th century train with a person stepping out of it, it’s a bright, partly cloudy day
An apparently empty train carriage at nighttime with dimmed light
A middle-aged Asian woman seated on stage, wearing a colourful outfit, holding a microphone, speaking
3 women sitting on a stage in a panel discussion - with a slide above them with their photos and names: Hanna Harris, Chief Design Officer / City of Helsinki; Dawn Lim, Executive Director, DesignSingapore Council; Bonnie Fahoome, Co-Executive Director, Design Core Detroit; Alina Rathke, Policy Advisor Design / Economy, City of Berlin
4 women of different ethnicities sitting on a stage in a panel discussion - with a slide above them with their photos and names: Hanna Harris, Chief Design Officer / City of Helsinki; Dawn Lim, Executive Director, DesignSingapore Council; Bonnie Fahoome, Co-Executive Director, Design Core Detroit; Alina Rathke, Policy Advisor Design / Economy, City of Berlin
4 women of different ethnicities sitting on a stage in a panel discussion - with a slide above them with their photos and names: Hanna Harris, Chief Design Officer / City of Helsinki; Dawn Lim, Executive Director, DesignSingapore Council; Bonnie Fahoome, Co-Executive Director, Design Core Detroit; Alina Rathke, Policy Advisor Design / Economy, City of Berlin
Selfie of 2 middle-aged light-skinned men standing in front of a large TV set with a big eagle symbol of the German government
A group of people sitting in a modern office space, some mildly smiling, at a window is a poster saying ‘Money and taxes’
A woman and a man sitting on stage in a conversation, a projected slide above them says: “Build, Burn, Rebuild: Digital Government after DOGE”
A woman with blond hair on stage at a conference, standing next to a lectern and projected slide saying: Ambition in government is not a nice to have. It is a must have.” “Only 22% of U.S. adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing just about always or most of the time.” - Pew
A woman with blond hair on stage at a conference, standing next to a lectern and projected slide saying: “And people loved it: 94% user satisfaction rate; and 86% improvement in trust in the IRS”
A woman with blond hair on stage at a conference, standing next to a lectern and projected slide saying “For the first time, rhe IRS let people file their taxes for free. In 2024, the IRS launched Direct File - a free, accurate, online tax filing service. Politicians, lobbyists, and even some colleagues said it was impossible.”
A woman with blond hair on stage at a conference, standing next to a lectern and projected slide saying ‘Making the impossible, possible — how free tax filing brought ambition back’
A 4-split slide with photographs and overlayed text and numbers: Section 1 says “job-to-be-done: Deliver a message on behalf of the monarch“ with the detail of a historical painting depicting a person holding a rolled note; Section 2 says “1853” and shows a painting of a horse carriage in a dusty landscape; Section 3 says “1997” and shows a photograph of a postal officer holding a pile of letters; Section 4 says “2016” and shows a text message from the HM Passport Office announcing that a new passport should arrive soon, with a link to the gov.uk website
A colourful slide with a pink background with blue pixels of different hues, the logo of DigitalService, and blocks of type saying: “Quarterly Connect Q&A”
A blue slide with white text saying ‘Designing for a better citizen experience’
A man at lectern in a modern university hall talking, behind him are 2 projected slides, one says “Session planning”, the other is a handwritten form saying “Typography is user experience: the train is still late, but now you can read it clearly” on “designing a typeface for Deutsche Bahn”
A big seminar university room with people sitting and standing — with red slides projected depicting a flame logo and the logotype of UX Camp Europe 2026
3 repeated posters slightly tilted, saying ‘Public design – Money and taxes – with the headline containing visual puns, a coin replacing the letter o of Money and the letter x of taxes being replaced by a percentage symbol; smaller information describes the location, time and date of the event
Keyboard accessibility is one of the most important aspects of accessibility compliance.
A dense slide with 2 columns comparing automatic and manual tests for accessibility – listing the what, strengths, limitations, what they are good for – and also why both are important
Slide saying “Global Awareness Accessibility Day — Digital Accessibility in the public administration”, with the logo of the NEXT network
A webpage is displayed on a laptop screen, featuring a pop-up window with the heading ‘Simulate accessibility personas’. The pop-up window shows two options: Simone and Ron, a person with dyslexia and a trembling hand who does not use assistive technology; both options feature a button labelled ‘Simulate’.
A panel discussion with 3 women and 1 man — all with light skin — sitting and talking to each other; with a slide above them saying: “Panel discussions with a hot seat” with pictures of the speakers
A man and a woman speaking in front of seated people with a projected slide saying “The main message: Change - that's when conflicts happen. To be successful designers, we must become better in handling conflict.”
A light-skinned woman in a casual business outfit holding a microphone next to a projected screen, saying SDD Berlin, a night about transforming the public sector
Partial screenshot of a website displaying 4 open design positions: • Regular and senior user researchers in Berlin • Service designer role in Berlin • UX/UI designer role in Berlin • Design fellow in Munich • Content design role in Berlin
An advertisement column in a public space next to a small park with various full-colour and full-photograph posters of people in running outfits; the colour ones are in dark blue and light yellow, saying “Riga – a city where everyone runs” in English and in Latvian
A grey advertisement coloum with 6 posters attached — in light green, light yellow and light purple, showing some table of programming; placed in an urban area with cars, trees and a house in the background
An older train type standing at a station platform, its coloured in yellow with vertical neon orange, white and dark blue stripes
2 trains at a train station and people walking out of them
A laptop computer with a text draft in a word processor including an image of a colourful accessibility empathy lab
DigitalService staff are sitting in a meeting room, chatting and in good spirits
A small coffee shop named ‘Baristokrat speciality coffee’ inside a well-maintained train station — with wooden panelling, a simple clock on top displaying 6:32 o'clock, a woman with headphones walks away from the shop
Sunrise over a square with light blue sky with a pedestrian crossing and a neo classist building on the right side, some cars parking on the left side
An empty digital map of the Baltic states only displaying thin blue train lines, a blue dot sits between Warsaw in Poland and Kaunas in Lithuania