How Public Design?

Against the backdrop of economic crisis and massive demographic change, governments across the globe must re-think public services at less cost. In the political context of public organisations, how does design offer a way forward? At the seminar ‘How Public Design?’ held on 1-2 September 2011, more than seventy participants met at MindLab, Copenhagen, to engage in this key question. During the seminar, practitioners, academics and public managers from as diverse places as Singapore, the United States, Australia, France, Britain, Norway and Denmark presented their experiences with the value of design within the public sector. See the speakers and participants.

“I’ve managed to get back home in one piece, but I think I left part of my soul behind in Copenhagen.”

Banny Banerjee, Associate Professor
Stanford University (US)

The conference had three sections: People, Visualisation and Space. See the programme. Below you can see presentations from the conference and what we found to be some of the highlights from the keynotes and parallel sessions.

People: How might we engage citizens differently?

Radical redesign is possible

In their keynote address, Brenton Caffin and Carolyn Curtis from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (AUS) illustrated how powerful it can be to create new public solutions with people, not for them. In Adelaide, South Australia, they have created the Family by Family model to radically redesign support for vulnerable families, helping them thrive again through mentor partnerships with the ‘positive deviant’ families that have made it in spite of tough times. As a result, costs are cut and outcomes for children and families are dramatically better. See the two videos: The Making of Family by Family and What is Family by Family?

Communicating with people

In the breakout workshop sessions, a number of concrete examples of citizen involvement were discussed.

Stine Børglum and Lene Jeppesen from the Danish tax administration showed how they had asked a dozen citizens with different professional backgrounds to use their talents to reflect on how the Tax Ministry writes about property tax to new home owners.

Lynne Maher of the NHS (UK) shared how her organisation´s benefit from observing and involving citizens in service design.

Anne Ryslinge from the Board of Industrial Injuries (DEN) showed how surprising insights about injured workers, can drive innovative thinking.

Could the idea of “beta” – unfinished designs that users can still improve upon – be a new approach to the shaping interactions between public sector organisations and the citizens they serve? asks John Holager of Live:Work (Nor).

Visualisation: How to enable a better dialogue?

Visualisation sparks conversation

In his inspirational keynote Rasmus Rune Nielsen, Managing Director of the 2+1 Ideas Agency showed examples of how visual images can capture the imagination of decision-makers and the wider public. At one extreme was the decision to ship Danish national icon The Little Mermaid to the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China, which enabled a renewed conversation about identity and Denmark’s offerings as a nation of “wellfairytales”.

Simona Maschi, Founder and Director, CIID (DEN) showed that visualising information in novel ways can help decision-makers view current problems from new perspectives. Public managers often take decisions on the basis of numbers –but visualisation allows them to see such numbers differently.

Alok Nandi (Bel) pointed out that visualisation must be driven by the intent and imagination of the designer.

Stephane Vincent (FR) founder of “la 27th Region” showed case examples of how citizens can co-design public services in practice via visual tools. As a key component of the design process, visualisation can take the form of physical models that add a touch, see and feel experience to early prototypes.

Space: Creating space for design

The session was kicked off by Phillip Colligan, Director of Nesta’s Public Services Lab (UK). Colligan showed a string of projects where the active engagement of citizens underlined that public managers can in fact let go of some control and let citizens into the arena of core service provision through co-design and co-production of services. According to Colligan, there is a much wider potential for re-imagining public services than we currently acknowledge – and citizen engagement is the key.

In the plenary, Stanford’s Banny Banerjee chaired a panel of Anna Kirah, Runa Sabroe, Christian Bason, Nina Terrey and Bryan Boyer. Several panellists addressed the barriers that design practice often encounters in public organisations, making it hard for new approaches to policy and service design to really ‘stick’.

Brian Boyer from Helsinki Designlab showed how they are working with creating space for design. The work at DesignLab includes the piloting of design-led approaches to social changes such as ageing and climate change.

Nina Terrey, director of ThinkPlace pointed out that design must become part of an internal practice, while it must also draw on outside sources and inspiration to feed innovation.

Christian Bason and Runa Sabroe from MindLab asked the question of how one become a trusted partner in change processes in complex, political governed organisations.

Anna Kirah argued that new solutions can only be useful and desirable for the people if they are part of the designprocess. Value comes from understanding
meaning and relevance.

Public managers must take the lead

It is impossible to crystallise a single essence of the hundreds of conversations that took place during ’How Public Design’. But one overarching point seemed clear: It is the responsibility of the decision-makers to redefine the relationship between the public system and citizens, so it both becomes more meaningful and more productive. To do so, we must engage citizens to co-design the new interactions.

“The vision may be radical, but change is incremental.”

Natascha Dexters, Head of Division
Ministry of Taxation (DK)