Public sector organisations are increasingly turning to design thinking to address societal issues and improve services. An article in Policy Design and Practice argues a focus on rationality, stability, and accountability in the public sector, impedes risk-taking and new ideas. The article presents a suite of strategies to support the application of public sector design thinking based on an analysis of 14 projects. This includes forming a design thinking alliance.
The need for design thinking
In recent decades, public sector organisations have been confronted with an expansion and exacerbation of wicked problems such as climate change and inequality. These issues fundamentally challenge the way public organisations operate and conventional design approaches fall short. They are increasingly seen as too technocratic, reductionist, closed, incremental, and unresponsive.
Instead, today’s wicked problems call for more innovative, open, collaborative and iterative, design approaches. As a result, design thinking is rapidly gaining interest. Design thinking refers to the way designers from disciplines such as graphic, product, and service design think and work in order to develop innovations that improve lives.
Design thinking can enhance innovation, participation, and responsiveness (and thereby improve services and outcomes). For these reasons, public organisations across the globe are increasingly experimenting with design thinking.
Applying design thinking
Design thinking is inherently open-ended, non-linear and exploratory. Effectively applying design thinking in the public sector can be problematic as it can be an awkward fit with established practices, structures and cultures. Table 1 illustrates the organisational tensions between conventional approaches and design thinking.
| Conventional design | Design thinking | |
| Structure | Bureaucratic | Organic |
| Culture | Hierarchy, stability, predictability | Autonomy, creativity, risk-taking |
| Work | Standardisation | Evolutions |
Table 1: Comparison of organisational characteristics
As can be seen, organisational characteristics often found in public organisations are fundamentally different from the characteristics associated with design thinking. These tensions can lead to resistance, rejection, and incompatibility.
About the research
The aim of the research was to identify strategies to support the application of design thinking within a public sector context using a case study approach. Fourteen cases were pooled from the work of three design agencies in The Netherlands and Denmark – Twynstra Gudde, Ideate, and the Danish Design Center. Each agency is known as a forerunner in the field with extensive experience of applying design in a public sector context.
The cases encompassed a variety of domains including agriculture, technology, climate, healthcare and infrastructure. All levels of government were represented.
What the research found
The analysis revealed a variety of strategies to support the application of design thinking in a public sector context. Strategies were targeted at either the people that were part of the project group or at the people that were part of the policy context for the project. place. In other words, strategies were either internally or externally focused. In addition, the strategies aimed to establish favourable attitudes toward design thinking or to establish beneficial connections and interactions.
The research identified four overarching strategic purposes to support the application of design thinking:
- Building confidence in design thinking
- Forming a design thinking alliance
- Generating support for design thinking
- Enhancing compatibility between the design project and the external context.
A suite of actions were identified to support the overarching purposes, and these are outlined in Table 2.
| Building confidence in design thinking |
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| Forming a design thinking alliance
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| Generating support for design thinking
|
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| Enhancing compatibility between the design project and the external context |
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Table 2: An overview of different strategies to support the application of design in a public sector context.
The bottom line
The research reinforces the view that additional efforts are required to effectively apply design thinking in the public sector. Issues with applying design thinking arise in the social interactions between the people directly or indirectly involved. To be effective, practitioners need to make these interactions productive by fostering favourable attitudes toward design thinking and establishing beneficial relations. This social side of applying design thinking in the public sector is often overlooked.
To build confidence, form an alliance, generate support, and enhance compatibility, the public sector designer needs to perform the roles of facilitator, coalition builder, lobbyist and entrepreneur. Correspondingly, participants from the client or stakeholder organisation need to adopt the roles of visionary, collaborator, ambassador and boundary spanner.
Want to read more?
Making way for design thinking in the public sector: a taxonomy of strategies – Geert Brinkman, Arwin van Buuren, William Voorberg and Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, Policy Design and Practice, April 2023
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- Published Date: 9 May 2023