Victor Udoewa
A service designer engages in many different types of design in order to improve the customer and employee experiences and service operations. The types of design could include technology design (visual or graphic design, UI or UX design, content strategy and information architecture), learning design, communications design, prop design, process design, org design, business design, policy design, and more. Business design and policy design are examples of two types of design a service designer can employ either at the service level or at a higher level.
What happens when a public service designer identifies the problems a service policy, a policy at the service level, addresses are also experienced by other services and products in the same government agency, or other agencies across the entire government? When a designer affects other services in an agency or other agencies across the government, the work transitions into the realm of systemic design. However, designing policy as a policy influencer or community member is a very different process than the process of creating policy as a policymaker. We share our framework for policy design by non-policymakers including a systems approach and a critical policy entrepreneurship phase largely absent for policymakers. We share an ongoing example of systemic policy design focused on normalizing the novel and niche practice of radical participatory design of government policies, services, and products for more equitable outcomes.
KEYWORDS: policy design; policy entrepreneurship; civic service design; systemic design