Public Sector Design – shared resources about the what, why and how?

[Originally published on the Australian Government Public Sector Innovation Network under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY AU licence]

What are some of the resources that you have found to be useful in learning about design (and design for the public sector)?

Part of the role of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Public Sector Design is to draw together the different methodologies, approaches and even words that exist about design across the public sector and build up a core common language that can be used by practitioners across agencies.[1. Of course each agency may have its own particular approach or understanding that relates to their specific context, as happens with many other cross-agency frameworks. It will however be an attempt to agree on the core tenets of design and ensure that common terms/concepts are understood between different areas.]

We will soon be posting some information about the common elements of design. Before that we thought it might be useful to share some of the easily available resources that we have come across and to invite you to share with us any that you have come across and would recommend to others.

Below is an initial list of a number of references that look to explain or guide the design process. We encourage you to add any additional material in the comments section. Over time we hope to develop further guidance on common resources that people in the public sector might use to learn more about design.

• • Stanford’s d.school’s Bootcamp Bootleg – an overview of the design process as taught at the Stanford University’s Institute of Design

• • Helsinki Design Lab’s Recipes for Systemic Change – this book explores the HDL Studio Model and includes an introduction to strategic design, and a ‘how-to’ manual

• • Dan Hill’s Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary – an eBook about strategic design

• • Christian Bason’s Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a Better Society – a book about how government agencies can use co-creation and tools for citizen involvement through design thinking and ethnographic research

• • The Danish Government agency MindLab design methods

• • Karl Ulrich’s Design: Creation of artifacts in society – a free eBook about design

• • Nesta’s ‘Prototyping Public Services’ Guide and ‘Prototyping Framework’

• • Tough Problem’s ‘Frame the Problems as a Question’ – a fact sheet on how to frame the problem as a focusing question

• • The UK Institute for Government publication ‘MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy’ – looks at insights from science and behaviour change that could lead to significantly improved outcomes, and at a lower cost, than the way many conventional policy tools are used.

What other resources would you suggest?