Design Justice Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Sasha Costanza-Chock: “What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world.

This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival…(More)”.

Improving public policy and administration: exploring the potential of design

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Paper by Arwin van Buuren et al: “In recent years, design approaches to policymaking have gained popularity among policymakers. However, a critical reflection on their added value and on how contemporary ‘design-thinking’ approaches relates to the classical idea of public administration as a design science, is still lacking. This introductory paper reflects upon the use of design approaches in public administration. We delve into the more traditional ideas of design as launched by Simon and policy design, but also into the present-day design wave, stemming from traditional design sciences. Based upon this we distinguish between three ideal-type approaches of design currently characterising the discipline: design as optimisation, design as exploration and design as co-creation. More rigorous empirical analyses of applications of these approaches is necessary to further develop public administration as a design science. We reflect upon the question of how a more designerly way of thinking can help to improve public administration and public policy….(More)”.

Human Capital and Administrative Burden: The Role of Cognitive Resources in Citizen-State Interactions

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Paper by Julian Christensen et al: “One means by which the state reinforces inequality is by imposing administrative burdens that loom larger for citizens with lower levels of human capital. Integrating insights from various disciplines, we focus on one aspect of human capital, cognitive resources. We outline a model that explains how burdens and cognitive resources, especially executive functioning, interrelate. We then provide illustrative examples, by highlighting three common life factors – scarcity, health problems, and age-related cognitive decline. These factors create a human capital Catch-22, increasing people’s likelihood of needing state assistance while simultaneously undermining the cognitive resources required to negotiate the burdens they encounter while seeking such assistance. The result is to reduce access to state benefits and increase inequality. We conclude by calling for scholars of behavioral public administration and public administration more generally to incorporate more attention to human capital into their research….(More)”.

Delivery-Driven Policy: Policy designed for the digital age

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Report by Code for America: “Policymaking is in a quiet crisis. Too often, government policies do not live up to their intent due to a key disconnect between policymakers and government delivery.

How might the shift to a digital world affect government’s ability to implement policy?

Practicing delivery-driven policymaking means bringing user-centered, iterative, and data-driven practices to bear from the start and throughout. It means getting deep into the weeds of implementation in ways that the policy world has traditionally avoided, iterating both on policy and delivery.

By tightly coupling policy and delivery, governments can use data about how people actually experience government services to narrow the implementation gap and help policies get the outcome they intend….(More)”

Using speculative design to explore the future of Open Justice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UK Policy Lab: “Open justice is the principle that ‘justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done’(1). It is a very well established principle within our justice system, however new digital tools and approaches are creating new opportunities and potential challenges which necessitate significant rethinking on how open justice is delivered.

In this context, HM Courts & Tribunal Service (HMCTS) wanted to consider how the principle of open justice should be delivered in the future. As well as seeking input from those who most commonly work with courtrooms, like judges, court staff and legal professionals, they also wanted to explore a range of public views. HMCTS asked us to create a methodology which could spark a wide-ranging conversation about open justice, collecting diverse and divergent perspectives….

We approached this challenge by using speculative design to explore possible and desirable futures with citizens. In this blog we will share what we did (including how you can re-use our materials and approach), what we’ve learned, and what we’ll be experimenting with from here.

What we did

We ran 4 groups of 10 to 12 participants each. We spent the first 30 minutes discussing what participants understood and thought about Open Justice in the present. We spent the next 90 minutes using provocations to immerse them in a range of fictional futures, in which the justice system is accessed through a range of digital platforms.

The provocations were designed to:

  • engage even those with no prior interest, experience or knowledge of Open Justice
  • be reusable
  • not look like ‘finished’ government policy – we wanted to find out more about desirable outcomes
  • as far as possible, provoke discussion without leading
This is an image of one of the provocation cards used in the Open Justice focus groups
Open Justice ‘provocation cards’ used with focus groups

Using provocations to help participants think about the future allowed us to distill common principles which HMCTS can use when designing specific delivery mechanisms.

We hope the conversation can continue. HMCTS have published the provocations on their website. We encourage people to reuse them, or to use them to create their own….(More)”.

The Next Step for Human-Centered Design in Global Public Health

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tracy Johnson, Jaspal S. Sandhu & Nikki Tyler at SSIR : “How do we select the right design partner?” “Where can I find evidence that design really works?” “Can design have any impact beyond products?” These are real questions that we’ve been asked by our public health colleagues who have been exposed to human-centered design. This deeper curiosity indicates a shift in the conversation around human-centered design, compared with common perceptions as recently as five years ago.

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in organizations that use human-centered design for innovation and improvement in health care. However, there have been challenges in determining how to best integrate design into current ways of working. Unfortunately, these challenges have been met with an all-or-nothing response.

In reality, anyone thinking of applying design concepts must first decide how deeply they want design to be integrated into a project. The DesignforHealth community—launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Center for Innovation and Impact at USAID—defines three types of design integration: spark, ingredient, or end-to-end.

As a spark, design can be the catalyst for teams to work creatively and unlock innovation.

Design can be an ingredient that helps improve an existing product. Using design end-to-end in the development process can address a complex concept such as social vulnerability.

As the field of design in health matures, the next phase will require support for “design consumers.” These are non-designers who take part in a design approach, whether as an inspiring spark, a key ingredient in an established process, or an end-to-end approach.

Here are three important considerations that will help design consumers make the critical decisions that are needed before embarking on their next design journey….(More)”.

Making Smart Cities More Playable: Exploring Playable Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Anton Nijholt: “This book explores the ways in which the broad range of technologies that make up the smart city infrastructure can be harnessed to incorporate more playfulness into the day-to-day activities that take place within smart cities, making them not only more efficient but also more enjoyable for the people who live and work within their confines. The book addresses various topics that will be of interest to playable cities stakeholders, including the human–computer interaction and game designer communities, computer scientists researching sensor and actuator technology in public spaces, urban designers, and (hopefully) urban policymakers….(More)”.

Applying design science in public policy and administration research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sjoerd Romme and Albert Meijer: “There is increasing debate about the role that public policy research can play in identifying solutions to complex policy challenges. Most studies focus on describing and explaining how governance systems operate. However, some scholars argue that because current institutions are often not up to the task, researchers need to rethink this ‘bystander’ approach and engage in experimentation and interventions that can help to change and improve governance systems.

This paper contributes to this discourse by developing a design science framework that integrates retrospective research (scientific validation) and prospective research (creative design). It illustrates the merits and challenges of doing this through two case studies in the Netherlands and concludes that a design science framework provides a way of integrating traditional validation-oriented research with intervention-oriented design approaches. We argue that working at the interface between them will create new opportunities for these complementary modes of public policy research to achieve impact….(More)”

What If There Were More Policy Futures Studios?

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Essay by Lucy Kimbell: “Unexpected election results are intersecting in new and often disturbing ways with enduring issues such as economic and social inequalities; climate change; global movements of people fleeing war, poverty and environmental change; and the social and cultural consequences of long-term cuts in public funding. These developments are punctuated by dramatic events such as war, terrorist attacks and disasters such as floods, fires and other effects of changes in rainfall and temperature. Many of the available public policy visions of the future fail to connect with people’s day-to-day realities and challenges they face. Where could alternative visions and more effective public policy solutions come from? And what roles can design and futures practices play in constituting these?

For people using design-based and arts-based approaches in relation to social and public policy issues, the practices, structures and processes associated with institutions making public policy present a paradox. On
the one hand, creative methods can enable people to participate in assessing how things are, in ways that are meaningful to them, and imagining how things could be different, and to do so in collaboration with people they might not ordinarily engage with. Workshops and spaces for exploring futures such as design jams, hackathons, digital platforms, exhibitions and co-working hubs can open up a distributed creative capacity for negotiating potentialities in relation to current actualities. The strong emphasis in design on how people experience issues – understanding things on their terms, informed by the principles of ethnography – can open up participation, critique and creativity. Such practices can surface and open up difficult questions about institutions and how they work….(More)”.

Co-Creation Of Public Services: Why And How

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Osimo and Francesco Mureddu: “Co-creation” and “design thinking” are trendy themes – the topic of innumerable conferences and a growing number of academic papers. But how do we turn co-creation into a reality for Europe’s 508 million citizens? In Co-Creation of Public Services: Why and How, Co-VAL’s new Policy Brief, co-authors Francesco Mureddu and David Osimo propose a ten-step roadmap for delivering genuinely user-centric digital government. The authors argue that it is time to put co-creation at the core of government functioning.

According to the authors, “today, co-creation is a mature subject. There is an extended theoretical and applied research effort underway, led in many places by members of the Co-VAL consortium, whose research informed the new policy brief.  And there is a solid professional community, ready to deliver, and staffed by people with clearly identified job profiles, such as “user researcher” and “service designer.” There are even success stories of entire countries that scaled up design thinking at national level, such as Italy’s Government Commissioner and Digital Transformation Team and the United Kingdom’s legendary Government Digital Services.”…(More)”.