Designers met last night in London for a discussion around their possible role in helping us all engage better with public services and civil institutions. At the practical end this might be improved design of ballot forms and council websites, and at the other employing design methods like visioning and prototyping more widely. The invitation from AIGA posed the questions:
Does design have a role in implementing social policy and addressing political challenges? From recycling and obesity to voting and citizenship, from education and healthcare to crime and punishment, initiatives are underway.
... offering some examples, and adding:
Do design methods and ways of thinking offer new approaches to social and political questions or is this naive hubris? Are designers' user-centric models what are needed for an increasingly complex society, or are designers just the latest creatives to be flattered by New Labour's embrace? Please come and join the debate.
Most traditional professionals faced with that sort of question aren't shy, and assert that of course an extra dose of law, science or financial planning will improve things greatly. In general the group last night were a bit more cautious - though as Louise Ferguson reminded us, projects, products and services always get designed by someone. If it isn't a designer, it could be an accountant or bureaucrat providing the framework that shapes what we get. I hope Louise expands on this key point on her blog. My concern was with the design of the event.
The panel of Ben Rogers, Richard Eisermann and James Woudhuysen - details here - were suitable smart in their references, and chair Nico Macdonald kept the discussion moving, but I found it difficult to gain many insights around the theme because of the traditional way things were organised.
On first entering the room in the Design Council I had high hopes of something conversational, because of the cabaret-style seating - small tables rather than rows of seats. But we fell into the usual arrangement of ten minutes each from the panel and then questions.
Although Nico encouraged us to reflect on our design experiences and examples relevant to social policy, the format tended to encourage for-and-against debate, rather than a flow of developing ideas. There were some pleas during discussion for the value of user-designer collaborations and ways to harness collective intelligence - but we couldn't ourselves put that into practice.
I think it would have been more useful to gain a clearer shared understanding at the outset of just what we mean by 'design' and 'social policy', and then have some conversations around the table of the special value of design compared, perhaps, with other approaches. Or we could have taken some specific situations. There's lots you can do within two hours if everyone gets a chance to talk rather than just listen. Instead conversation had to wait until the pub ... which is tough if you need to catch a train or don't enjoy that environment.
We had plenty of graphic and other designers in the room .... but what we needed, of course, was a meetings designer.
Ann Light reports more fully in Usability News
Originally published at Partnerships Online
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