Policy x Design Blog
We’re excited to have received so many excellent applicants to serve as fellows on our upcoming project to investigate the high-school admission experience with the NYC Department of Education — many thanks to all who applied.
And a special shout-out to those who helped spread the word: more than half of our applicants said they heard about the project through a friend or colleague, so we appreciate everyone’s efforts to send great people our way!
We’ll be moving quickly to review the applications and interview candidates. (The final split of applicants by category is to the left, so our aspiring research fellows have the stiffest competition.) Watch this space for the announcement of our class of fellows later this month.
May 06, 2013 | Categories: News, Policy [x] Design
NYC Innovates is a new network for employees of local, state, federal, and international government agencies. Members are invited to share strategies on creating cultures of innovation within their organizations and any exciting projects they are working on.
On Wednesday, April 24, from 6:30 to 8:30 PM, the group will hold its inaugural event, An Evening of Civic Innovation. Public Policy Lab director Chelsea Mauldin will present on Public & Collaborative, PPL’s ongoing project with the NYC Dept. of Housing Preservation & Development and Parsons DESIS Lab. The evening will also include presentations from three City employees who are using technology in innovative ways to improve government services.
The event is free, but registration is required.
Apr 23, 2013 | Categories: Events, Federal, Government, International, Local, Policy [x] Design, State | Tags: Events, New York City, Service Design
The Public Policy Lab has formed a partnership with the New York City Department of Education’s Innovation Zone (iZone) and the Office of School Enrollment to explore opportunities for improving the high-school admissions process. The New York City Department of Education is the largest school district in the country, with more than 1.1 million students and 1,700 schools. Each year over 75,000 students participate in a complex school-selection and application process to gain admission to city public high schools.
During the spring and summer of 2013, we’ll be investigating the high-school admissions process through the experiences of students, families, administrative staff, and policymakers. Ultimately, we hope to inform the development of supports that assist students — particularly those from low-income and non-English-speaking families — in making more informed decisions when selecting a high school. We’ll also use this initiative to test approaches for iZone’s ongoing use of design-based innovation methods.
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Apr 22, 2013 | Categories: Featured Posts, NGO, News, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Competitions, Education, Ethnography, New York City, Service Design
How might partnerships between public service designers and policymakers enable healthy shifts in lifestyle choices, or, even increase tax repayment rates, which require a behavioral response? How might they draw upon social capital to create space for community-based collaboration and solutions?
One interesting example is the UK Cabinet Office of the Behavioral Insights Team, or the “nudge unit.” They began work in July 2010 “to find innovative ways of encouraging, enabling and supporting people to make better choices for themselves.” The team has been employing a variety of empathic-based research methods – behavioral observation and psychology – to sculpt services on a small scale through iteration and evaluation. As a result of their innovative methodologies and proven outcomes, the team is no longer a peripheral experiment, but a core component to policymaking.
Some of their initial successes: 1. Personal text messaging was used to increase the repayment rates of court fines. One can assume that the channel in combination with the human tone proved to be effective. 2. Scenarios like – “9 out of 10 people in your area have paid their tax on time” – were written into documents that encouraged tax repayments. The focus on social capital influenced behavior; tax repayment rates were improved. While this list is quite straight forward, it shows potential.
David Halpern, director of the Behavioral Insights Team, writes in The Guardian that by “scrutinizing our [public] services from top to bottom with a behavioral lens…by shifting our focus, and resources, from treating expensive symptoms to acting on behavioral causes; and by reshaping services from passive delivery to…nurturing the capacity of citizens to help themselves and each other,” public service designers, policymakers, and social innovators have the ability to improve the quality of service outcomes while enhancing people’s lives.
This is the third of three related posts on empathetic and behavioral aspects of service design by Public Policy Lab fellow Liana Dragoman; also see part one and part two.
Mar 15, 2013 | Categories: Design/Policy Resources, International, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Behaviorial Economics, Service Design, United Kingdom
Mar 13, 2013 | Categories: Design/Policy Resources, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Co-Design, Commentary, Empathy, Service Design
Mar 11, 2013 | Categories: Design/Policy Resources, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Commentary, Empathy, Service Design
The Blue Button is a downloadable medical-record format that allows patients easy access to all of their medical data. First implemented by the Department of Veteran Affairs (and now also available to Tricare and Medicare beneficiaries), the original Blue Button provided a text-only version of a individual’s records.
Last year, a national design contest called for redesigns of the record, to meet four objectives:
- Improve the visual layout and style of the information from the medical record
- Create a human-centered design that makes it easier for patient to manage their health
- Enable health professionals to more effectively understand and use patients’ health information
- Help family members and friends care for their loved ones
The design community took up the challenge and produced an extraordinary body of smart human-centered design, putting more power in patients’ hands.
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Feb 28, 2013 | Categories: Federal, Government, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Competitions, Crowdsourcing, Health Care, Medicare, Veterans, Websites
Here’s an update to our post early last year on the status of the U.S. Postal Service: Even with huge boosts from last year’s election mail, USPS revenue in 2012 continued to decline, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the face of these record losses, the postal service continues to seek ways to adapt to a rapidly changing market, but it’s slow going.
In the past, the agency has sought professional design assistance to imagine better paths forward. Design researchers at Maya partnered with the USPS to explore customer segmentation to assess the value of customized services. They concluded in 2008 that the agency’s needs should be addressed programmatically, as a full system, instead of tackling one small challenge at a time. (more…)
Feb 26, 2013 | Categories: Federal, Government, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Postal Service
Submissions are due on March 15th for the annual Core 77 Design Awards. Among the 17 project categories is Service Design, for ideas “entailing the organization of end-users, communication, transactions, infrastructure, institutions and organizational systems.” Entry requirements are here — note that there is an entry fee of $50 to $150. Jury captains for the service category this year are Anna Meroni, design professor and expert in sustainability and social innovation, and Ezio Manzini, sustainable designer, founder of the DESIS network, and a lecturer last year in the Parsons Desis Lab and Public Policy Lab’s Public & Collaborative lecture series at Parsons.
Last year’s winners in the Service Design category included Basecamp, a product and online community in partnership with Zipcar that makes access to camping experiences easier for urbanites; the Service Design Programme to support Wales’ manufacturing industry; and an open-source platform where LEGO fans can submit product ideas to be voted into production.
Applicants must answer questions about the problem they seek to solve, design process and stakeholder research, values and social impact, and project scope. Images must also be uploaded to the application site (a video testimonial is optional). We look forward to the results in June. Winners will receive this trophy and digital ribbon, and be published in the online awards gallery. You can follow the Core 77 Design Awards on Twitter for updates.
Feb 22, 2013 | Categories: Design/Policy Resources, Policy [x] Design | Tags: Competitions
Policymakers need new avenues for ideas and development. In India, Sonia Manchanda, a principal and co-founder of Idiom, a large design consultancy based in Banglagore, has imagined a new way forward.
Manchanda felt the simple act of listening could dramatically change the international-development discussion. Her breakthrough moment occurred during an ethnographic conference when she realized that user research tends to focus on what is, not what could be. She felt that society needed to shift away from thinking about people’s needs and focus on helping to bring their dreams into reality. In collaboration with Jose Carlos Teixira, a professor at New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design, she created an organization called Dream: IN, dedicated to “transforming youth from being mere consumers of income and employment to becoming creators of income and employment.”
For two days in January 2011, Dream:IN sent 101 trained youth from design and management schools around India for one week to start conversations. Traveling thousands of miles, the students got thousands of young people to open up and express their hopes for the future by asking, “What is your biggest dream?” This simple question and its responses led to new way of seeking out and finding innovative ideas.
Once back from their dream collecting, Manchanda’s team analyzed the conversations. Among the top findings were the frustrated ambitions of Indian youth and a clear lack of faith in national leaders. A large gap in leadership was noted in every sphere of life, with technology playing a powerfully subversive role as Indians turn to cell phones and the Internet for their information. The key insights were published in a newsletter and sent to top-ranking government officials.
Turning the captured dreams into actionable plans was the task of a four-day conclave in February 2012. (more…)
Feb 21, 2013 | Categories: International, NGO | Tags: Crowdsourcing, Ethnography, India
An Empathetic Lens
In a recent RSA Animate video, philosopher Roman Krznaric discusses how social change is ignited through “outrospection,” or empathic approaches to life that arise from curiosity. When humans move beyond themselves to truly see, feel, and comprehend others’ realities and/or participate in the telling of others’ stories, the results can be revelatory. In fact, the collective consciousness that is raised during an exchange can most likely alter perspective and related behavior.
Krznaric says, “Empathy is about social change…a revolution of human relationships…We need new social institutions. For example, an empathy museum…a place, which is not about dusty exhibits…but an experiential and conversational public space…” where people can connect with others and come to understand the lived realities of the individuals who pick their coffee beans or lead their country. Collective empathy has shown to be transformative for individuals and societies because it deconstructs the language of assumption, control, and power through its practice.
How does this approach relate to the work of designers? Many social innovators and public service designers draw on sincere forms of collaboration in order to ignite positive social change. Participatory service-design research methods—like ethnography, behavioral observation, co-creation, and iteration/testing cycles—support service designers in the act of meta-designing for outrospection, or creating contexts in which people can perceive the experiences of others and respond empathetically.
These methods bring to life outrospection in order to drive the co-design of service systems, and ensure that those systems have the capacity to support personal histories and social context. With an empathic lens, service designers begin to be able to see, feel, or comprehend what is not obvious beyond their own context and desires and generate real opportunities for social and cultural change.
This is the second of three related posts on empathetic and behavioral aspects of service design by Public Policy Lab fellow Liana Dragoman; see part one. Part three is coming soon.