At the conference on design, @andreasiodmock presented what design can bring to government. Beyond the discipline itself, it’s a mindset that design can bring, epitomised in her slide showing how design can help us move from “how can I” to “how can we”, something we’ve been focusing on with our different Transformed by You challenges, from how we can we help each other keep fit and stay healthy to how we can make the best use of the public spaces around us.
Not only does the change in semantics help build civic capacity, which is no bad thing, it’s also more efficient. If you start with “how can I”, you’ll get many different and even competing needs and only the assets that an individual can mobilise. If you start with “how can we”, you get people to focus on the needs…and of the assets of those around them. Moreover, you start to move in the direction of bringing a systems perspective to tackling issues.
We’re also big fans that @policylabuk have involved students, notably from the RCA. We’ve brought students on board from our local universities and colleges and are really proud that we’re training a new generation of social designers, because we don’t just want these design skills to benefit our own services (they’re not our services, there the services of the people we serve), but of the services and projects that are trying to deliver social impact in our communities.
#SDGC14 @AndreaSiodmok: “My acid test whether we have had an impact: If people start talking about#prototyping.”
— Markus Edgar Hormeß (@markusedgar) October 7, 2014
One of the aspects we’ve focused on is to introduce and encourage people from different parts of the community to get stuck into prototyping, whether they’re designers or developers…or people who’ve uncovered insights, but don’t think they have the technical skills to prototype. Our Innovation Day wasn’t about proving everyone can prototype, it’s more about creating an environment where people can pool their different skills and insights to prototype compelling solutions to unmet needs, that focus as much on usability as feasibility, as much on impact as on purpose.
