The Civic Designer's Toolkit
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When you look inside a civic designer’s toolkit, you probably won’t find anything you can hold. What you will get is a bunch of intangibles – an amalgamation of frameworks, approaches and strategies. Diverse and innovative, the designer’s toolkit comes fully equipped with facilitation techniques to bring people together, understand problems and codesign solutions.
Following on from Civic Design Week, we have rounded up some of the latest tips and techniques that you might find inside a designer’s toolbox – some of which you may even want to add to your own!
The ‘design by’ method
So often we hear the phrase ‘design for’ – design for the user, the business, the community. The problem is that when we frame the design process in this way, we undermine the value of community members and key stakeholders, assigning power exclusively to designers.
“The ‘design for’ method is an establishment mindset and value system that is not inclusive,” says Jennifer Strickland, Senior Human Centered Design Accessibility Engineer. According to Strickland, solutions can only be inclusive and equitable when those who are being served are positioned at the forefront of decision making and people without power are given agency. “The value system of ‘design for’ has aligned with tenants of colonialism where power hoarding, paternalistic attitudes, and the idea of a ‘one right way’ keep established patterns and ways of thinking in power,” says Strickland.
Through participatory design (an approach that invites all stakeholders into the design process as a means of better understanding, meeting and preempting their needs) and emancipatory research (a method of social inquiry that seeks the perspectives of disadvantaged people who are traditionally excluded from contribution) designers can shift power in the design process so that solutions are designed by, rather than for, the people.
The systems design framework
An important role of the designer is to create services that represent and work for the people. To do this, designers must implement systematic frameworks that target every element of a project so that it may be successful.
Such is the objective of Policy Labs’ ‘Public Policy Layer Cake’. The system, built on principles of inclusivity, agency and accessibility, aims to break apart the layers of public policy to identify where power lies and how it might be redistributed so that complex services can achieve better results. The approach deconstructs the roles of those working within and using public services, so that designers can better understand how the integration of different human beings impacts a project holistically.
Referencing a recent case study in New York City, Shanti Mathew, Natalie Sims and Natalia Radywyl explain that an effective public policy system addresses all levels of public service delivery, including frontline staff, service managers, program leaders and public officials through structured implementation of education, protocols and tools, policy delivery models and concepts. On the flip side, users’ engagement with the service is considered at every stage to ensure that usage, modification and participation is wholly effective.
Digital tools and considerations
Across both the private and public sectors, digitisation is ever-increasing. It is up to designers to equip themselves with creative and effective digital tools so that users are not excluded as we hurdle further into this computerised landscape.
Stemming from their research around Belgians’ use of technology and actionable avenues for federal administrations, Namahn’s Yalenka Marien (Designer and Design Operations Lead) and Marie Mervaillie (Service/UX Designer) explore how inclusive digital transformation might be achieved within government. Their bottom-up approach reveals several practical takeaways for designers:
- Users are more at ease with using a mobile phone than other forms of technology, so it is important to design mobile first.
- Platforms should be coherent to assist users in understanding links between procedures and administrations.
- Investing in content design that makes language visual and accessible is imperative so that users are able to quickly grasp what is needed of them.
- Building trust is crucial and is reliant upon personal, direct and punctual contact and assistance.
- When developing digital solutions, involve people and organisations who work with those who are most at risk of being excluded.
- Share knowledge with other designers and departments to foster vision and provoke creative solutions.
- Don’t just talk the talk – translate intention into action by holding managers accountable for their promises.
