Publication at Revista Diseña 14.
How might we support the public sector design field tomature and practitioners to advance and improve their work?
Design is expanding as a field of knowledge and practice impacting the public and policy sectors inmany parts of the world. There are now numerous activities and examples where design methods and approaches have been used to shape public policies, government services, and citizen engagement.
With a wide range of work reaching new levels of maturity, the Parsons DESIS Lab ran an exploratory research project from February to June 2018 to inquire into the kinds of sector-level data, tools andinformation that would help the public sector design field to mature and support practitioners toadvance their work.
The team began research with the working idea of building a new Public Sector Design Index to measure investments in design by U.S. government agencies; initially in the US and with the view in time to developing an international resource. The index was conceived as a working idea to structurethe research and prompt further ideas about the kinds of high-level data that would benefitpractitioners.
ROLE
Graduate Research Assistant - Design-led Research, Graphic Design, Data Analysis, Facilitation
TEAM
Prof. Mariana Amatullo, Prof. Eduardo Staszowski, Camilla Buchanan, Isabella Gady
DESK RESEARCH
The project started with an initial scoping exercise in the form of a comparative analysis of indices, as well as existing research on design in government.
PRACTITIONERS INTERVIEWS
Over the course of this first phase of the project - February 2018 to June2019 - a total number 13 interviews were conducted. The one-on-one interviews were conducted in progressive phases, each phase involving a slightly more focused line of inquiry and possible sample group adjustments based on our insights. In a first attempt to analyze the data that has been collected, the project team developed a set of categories based on the most prominent topics and questions from the responses of all interviewees.
PILOT SURVEY AND WORKSHOP
After several rounds of review, with the support from external stakeholders and project partners, the research resulted in the development of a pilot survey which was shared with close project partners hoping to further simplify and refine the set of indicators to continue developing and refining tools for data collection. With the data collected, we facilitated a workshop at Parsons with the collaborators from the entire project. This workshop was a validation of ourresearch and helped us to refine the final phase.
OUTCOMES & SCALE
The research found that despite growth in public sector design work the sector lacks developed systems and tools characteristic of a maturing field. Following the pilot survey the team focusedon four themes where better information is required:
1. Design organizations, teams and roles
2. Funding and procurement
3. Skills and value
4. Impact metrics
In a scale, the project aimed to understand what sector-level resources practitioners from all the world need. The team also aimed to interrogate the role of The New School university in developing these resources.