Paper by Stefano Maffei, Marzia Mortati, and Beatrice Villari for the 10th European Academy of Design Conference – Crafting the Future: “In this paper we present the idea of connecting co-design approaches and techniques to the process of policy formation. The objective is to explore the possibilities to co-design policies (making policies together), through a better understanding of the policy formation cycle and analysing the new roles, competencies, skills, and tools that could support such process. Acknowledging the recent interests of the European Commission, the paper focuses on the European policy formation cycle, comparing the current practices to an on-going initiative which is investigated as a case-study of collaborative policy making (an example of policy co-design). Both the case-study analysis and the literature research are integrated with governmental documents, reports, and initiatives that support the relevance and interest on this topic.
The analysis highlights a context where the idea of collaborative policy making is just now emerging. Three main reflections are proposed throughout the paper to further the contribution of design research to policy making: (a) the issues to be considered for citizens’ participation in policy formation through design, (b) the inclusion of co-design approaches for policymaking, (c) the possibility to include participative processes in the emerging field of design policies.”
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