Perhaps you consider patterns as boring. When it comes to design in government, boring doesn’t mean dull or unimaginative. It means dependable, familiar, and safe. In public policy and service design, that’s exactly what we need more of. We need approaches that make it easier for people to use government services, and easier for teams to deliver them well. Across government, teams are grappling with common challenges: tightening budgets, rising demand, and the people who use our services expecting digital services to “just work.” Amid these pressures, the real innovation isn’t about reinventing the wheel but about scaling what already works. That’s where design patterns come in …reusable solutions to common problems. _This post is part of a series about**public design patterns**. They are inspired by the Public Design Conference, and published between the Winter 2026 and Summer 2027. Read other posts in this series here._ ## Enabling leaders to create better outcomes for citizens Patterns don’t only deliver efficiency; they’re a leadership tool. When leaders champion reuse and consistency, they’re signalling a commitment to value, trust, and delivery. They’re making it easier for teams across departments to learn from one another, and for citizens to experience government as one joined-up system rather than a maze of separate services. When every government service looks and behaves differently, it’s confusing. Familiar patterns mean people can complete tasks more easily and confidently, even when moving between departments. They don’t notice consistency when it’s there, but they do when it’s missing. Consistency means better accessibility by default. It means fewer mistakes. It means more time and energy for those who need extra support. In other words, it means better outcomes for everyone. Consistency builds trust. People shouldn’t have to learn how to interact with government anew each time they need something. Familiarity gives confidence; confidence builds trust; and trust strengthens the legitimacy of public institutions. So at its heart, this isn’t about systems or standards, but it’s about people. ## Defining patterns There is nothing new or wild about using patterns. A design pattern is a general, reusable solution to a common problem that occurs within a particular context. It’s not finished or perfect, but rather a template or blueprint that provides a starting point to help structure solutions in a consistent, proven way. Simply put, patterns have been used for hundreds of years to improve consistency - the first mention I can find is from using patterns in planning and how we design physical infrastructure such as roundabouts - so it is very ‘tried and tested’. When we think of design patterns for digital, some of our designers at Wales’s Centre for Digital Public Services played with different levels of fidelity and have broken down the different types of patterns that might be used (…and we are still working out what each one should be called!): * **Component patterns:** these are individual things we might use in a design, such as a button pattern or how we design radio buttons. The GOV.UK component library has tonnes of examples! * **Page patterns:** how to show a specific page. These can be similar to the content patterns in the GOV.UK design system. * **Interaction or small tasks:** these are the patterns that are called patterns in the GOV.UK design system and are more about interactions that can be designed to be consistent, such as how we design the way we collect repeatable information across different services—such as name, address, national insurance number etc. * **User flows:** this is where we have started to dig into service patterns and have begun piecing together some of the patterns above into small user flows to explore whether there is scalable consistency for tasks such as booking something—whether that is booking a doctor’s appointment or booking a badminton court! * **Blueprints:** we haven’t looked at this at all, but we assume this is the next level for patterns that look more across the end-to-end design of the service and improve consistency both front stage and backstage. ## **Patterns as a policy tool** What we are finding, across different parts of the public sector, is that service patterns in the form of user flows, can be used and applied in a wide range of contexts with confidence - we’ve already proven that in a fire service, a local authority, a sponsored body, and more. User flow patterns (like _apply_ , _book_ , _pay_) are becoming the quiet superpower of design across policy and delivery. In Wales, we’ve been developing a library of service patterns to help teams build consistently high-quality services faster and more safely. Now imagine applying that same principle to policy design itself. Patterns aren’t just a design concern. They’re a strategic policy opportunity. Every time a policymaker designs a new intervention, they’re engaging with patterns, whether they realise it or not. Recognising and reusing proven ways of doing these things helps ensure policies can be implemented effectively, safely, and at scale. Could we identify recurring “policy patterns”? Then, could we equip policymakers with tried-and-tested frameworks? Instead of starting from scratch, teams could focus on adapting what works to their context, informed by evidence and citizen experience. Patterns help translate intent into reality. Patterns can become the connective tissue between policy intent, service delivery, and citizen outcomes. ## **Patterns are a multiplier for reform** Patterns may be quiet work, but they have loud effects. They enable scale, efficiency, and trust. They turn isolated good practice into shared capability. And they give policymakers the tools to design for delivery - not just in theory, but in practice. In an era where public services must do more with less, patterns are not a constraint. They are a multiplier. The future of government isn’t about one big reform, it’s about thousands of small, consistent, reusable patterns that make the system work better for everyone. **Want to explore or contribute to the Welsh Service Patterns Library?** Stay up-to-date with our patterns work via our service patterns page or get in touch with the team to learn how patterns can help your policy or service deliver more with less. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Design is having real-world impact on the UK’s public services. A recent re-design of Further Education teacher recruitment services has saved the public purse over £1million and enabled thousands of additional people to get on the career path to become a teacher in a college or other Further Education provider. ## Improving services for teacher recruitment Further Education (FE) colleges are a vital part of the education system run by the UK’s Department for Education, providing young people with the applied technical skills needed to go on into the jobs we desperately need for our economic growth and to support society more widely, such as construction, digital, childcare and healthcare. Teaching in Further Education not only requires a qualification level above those who you are teaching, but also needs real world experience, so recruiting enough good quality and inspiring teachers is a challenge. A communications campaign, _Teach in Further Education_, has been running for 2 years to help with this challenge, alongside an information website and supporting helpline. The website was designed and built by a communications agency in a relatively short space of time and was proving costly to keep running, difficult to update the content as policy priorities changed, and was no longer meeting new laws coming in about website accessibility. ## A multidisciplinary re-design The FE workforce recruitment policy team met with the Customer Experience & Design (Digital) team to discuss alternative options, alongside communications colleagues. Bringing the site in house would both save significant costs but also give the team a chance to bring more user centred design to the site, understanding the needs of people interested in working in FE, and making sure the content, design and layout of the site met their needs. The policy, comms and digital design teams worked together for 9 months to redesign and launch the site based on 40 interviews with prospective and current FE teachers, and college leaders recruiting them, and 6 quantitative surveys with a total of 3,133 prospective FE teachers. The team used the research to understand the needs of the users and to carry out multiple rounds of testing of different designs, layouts and content. The designers had to balance the needs of the users, with the needs of the policy and comms teams to communicate certain information and meet the objectives of the communications campaign. ## Understanding future teachers From our research we learned that, unlike school teaching, many people lacked awareness of what Further Education teaching was, what it entailed and whether or not they would be eligible to teach in FE. This led to the development of some very top-level website content on these topics and the development of an “readiness checker” – a simple step-by-step quiz to help people work out whether they might be able to make the move into FE teaching. The biggest barrier to becoming an FE teacher from our surveys was confidence, with 50% saying this was a barrier to them. So the checker and website content tone was carefully written to be encouraging, as well as signposting to support, such as the helpline. Another user need was around clear and trusted information on the steps to becoming an FE teacher, which the team wrote collaboratively with the policy and communications teams. The toughest decision was how to order the information in the way that made sense to users, and a “top tasks” approach was taken, using quantitative testing to prioritise what information most people needed, balanced against the needs of the communications campaign. The site structure was then mocked up into a prototype and A/B tested using a panel survey of people across England. The final result showed a significant improvement versus the existing site in the rating of it being “easy to find the information I was looking for”, as well as being “easy to understand the information on the site”. ## The return on investment in design The site was launched on time in November 2024 to meet the campaign spend bursts. It now fully complies with website accessibility laws WCAG2.2. Not only has the site had around 160k sessions so far, but all engagement metrics improved: engagement time per user went up 32%, engaged sessions per active user by 21%, and average engagement time per session by 8.3%. Comparing Jan to March 24 to Jan to March 25 (comparable periods for campaign spend) and adjusting for the changed tracking consent, conversions improved by 120% (11,981 to 26,366), meaning more people clicking through to job boards to take that next step towards becoming an FE teacher. After adjusting for campaign spend, weekly conversions are currently up 194%. The readiness checker the team identified through understanding the user needs saw immediate high use and, to date, has been completed over 34k times, that’s almost a quarter of all sessions. This means that without any additional campaign spend, more people are being engaged and taking steps towards becoming FE teachers. The new site also saves £347k each year in running costs, so despite a £650k initial investment the 5-year savings are just under £1.1M. Most importantly, the site is helping to make potential FE teachers feel more confident about changing their careers. This project shows how taking a user centred design approach, including quantitative and qualitative research and testing, can make measurable improvements towards policy outcomes. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Eight designers working in the Finnish, UK and Australian tax administrations spent four hours over two days in exploratory talks about design patterns. We developed nine insights through our conversations. We discovered shared perspectives in: * high-level understanding of design patterns; * our aspirations for the use of patterns; * our observations about where patterns were successful; * the barriers and enablers to pattern use We co-developed ideas to communicate their value and increase their use. ## About us Our collaboration was sparked by the Public Design Conference (part of the World Design Congress Design Safari) in September 2025. The size of our respective tax organisations varied (approximately 4,000 in the Finnish Tax Administration; 20,000 in the Australian Taxation Office and 67,000 in the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs respectively). In all organisations, design had evolved in different locations and for different purposes. Rather than attempt comprehensive representation of all of these centres and disciplines, we focused on what we could learn from each other and our design practices. Three of the designers from the ATO came from a subject-agnostic Service Design capability that partners with business on a range of major projects, and one designer came from an area focused largely on public-facing user experience (UX). The designer from the Finnish Tax Administration works in an area of the administration leading customer relationship management, often focusing on broader service design and customer insights projects. In HMRC, the three participating designers also came from design capabilities located in different parts of the organisation. They represented standardised process mapping and an approach to problem definition, strategic IT solutions and detailed IT design. ## Nine insights on patterns Our collaboration produced nine insights on developing and using international public design patterns… ### 1 Pattern definitions While the participants shared a high-level definition of patterns, as repeatable solutions, we discovered differences in the detailed models and taxonomy for user interface (UI) patterns. We also found that our definitions of service and policy design were less resolved generally and shared fuzzy boundaries with standards and methods. ### 2 Pattern purpose and aspirations The participants had similar views of the purpose of patterns and similar aspirations for their use including: * organisational and design efficiencies * creating modularity * providing guidance and enabling flexibility * training and recruitment benefits * improved consistency and of practice and services * improved communications across design disciplines and organisations * embedding the use of standards ### 3 Pattern acquisition Participants noted that patterns could be created new in-house or adopted from existing in-house or external sources. New patterns can be created when existing patterns are not suitable for the design challenge. Where a formal library exists, evidence is required that existing patterns are not suitable, a new pattern is then developed, approved and added to the library. We noted however that there can be ‘unofficial patterns’ created by leveraging existing design work in a new design project, which might be shared again with other designers. These ‘unofficial patterns’ are not part of a formal system, but were known about and leveraged by some parts of the design capability. The existence of unofficial patterns highlights one of the aspirations for the use of patterns, that of designers avoiding duplication of earlier work and instead building upon it. Here, common design foundations are shared through personal relationships and networking, rather than the structure and governance of a pattern library. Governments can also create (and mandate the use of) patterns such as the Digital Service Standard in Australia, which are designed to be used by constituent agencies. Governments may also adopt (and mandate the use of) national and international standards such as WCAG 2. These might function as Service Patterns and/or be integrated into UX or IT system patterns. Leveraging existing patterns to acquire or adapt new patterns offers efficiency (in much the same way that the subsequent use of patterns does). Designers working on patterns can avoid duplication of earlier work and instead build on it. The work of others can be used as a starting point to accelerate the process of pattern development. Some of the group noted that where an organisation is innovating, there may not be suitable whole-of-government, or national patterns available. The risks of pattern adoption are that a pattern may be adopted without sufficient consideration of specific contexts or ecosystems and that it may not in fact be fit-for-purpose (it may not be solving the right problem), or it could introduce more functional complexity than is required. ### 4 Pattern success The participants also reported similar experiences about when and where pattern use has been successful and what the enablers and the barriers to success were. Examples of where patterns have been successful, provide some clues about communicating and gaining support for patterns. We noted success with patterns where: * they offer efficiencies, such as the UK’s pattern for logo development, which make updating logos faster and more effective * they fill a need for individuals – for designers and/or non-designers, such as enabling faster, accurate development of personas * the value to work is apparent – for example, where they are used in large programs of work with multiple simultaneous design projects * they provide a starting point that freed up design expertise for value-adds * there is organisational support and infrastructure including governance so that designers and others are aware of the availability of pattern libraries and similar resources Enablers of pattern use included: * organisational buy-in, including governance * senior stakeholder buy-in * where patterns follow behavioural insights principles Barriers centred on cultural perceptions, where design practitioners felt that design is a discipline of the ‘blank page’ and the ‘blue sky’ initiative. The perception noted here is that patterns can stifle creativity, rather than enable it. This is interesting in comparison with the insight about ‘unofficial patterns’ and designers working together organically to leverage others’ foundational work. ### 5 Context matters We noted limitations to the universality of patterns. Context matters – in the organisation (culture and design maturity), the design discipline (policy, UI, service, process) and the subject matter (e.g. tax, health). The use of patterns was most mature in UX and IT systems in all our organisations and were used to greater or lesser degrees in services and policy. This seemed to echo previous experiences with agile project methodology. Agile began in IT and has spread into other disciplines, with modifications. Principles and concepts of an agile approach are transferable to some extent, but not all of the rituals and deliverables of agile project methodology are relevant in different discipline contexts. Participants reflected on the extent to which patterns could be common across the subject-matter of tax administration. We noted the distinctions between types of taxes and tax administrations that would make this challenging at a detailed level. We noted that some public-facing UI aspects such as the concept of making a payment could be applicable across different jurisdictions. We also noted that, at a system level, facilitating the flow of information and standardised data between government and non-government organisations within a jurisdiction would be helpful. Finland provided a case study of work to enable the standardised sharing of data between Finnish government and non-government entities. At the international level, facilitating the flow of information across jurisdictions could also be useful in terms of international tax treaties and international agreements such as those made through OECD. We noted again here the fuzzy boundaries between standards, methodologies and patterns. ### 6 Siloes and multiple cultures The siloed nature of our organisations and the development of multiple cultures within them presented challenges and also indicated the potential benefits from the use of patterns. The larger the organisation in which pattern-use was being introduced, the larger the potential benefits, and the larger the challenges. ### 7 Early intervention Introducing pattern-use early in the development of a design capability or in organisational development could mitigate these later challenges. The group acknowledged that recognising the point at which patterns can and should be developed in a nascent design capability was a challenge in itself. ### 8 Return on investment In all organisations, regardless of size, balancing the investment required to create, maintain and govern the use of patterns was challenging. While efficiencies are one of the benefits sought through pattern use, there was sometimes an unrealistic expectation that pattern libraries would maintain themselves, and that patterns could be used effectively by those with no design capability. ### 9 Building pattern use and communicating value To build pattern use and communicate the value to the organisation, the participants shared several suggestions: * Show, don’t tell. It’s challenging to build a case based on theoretical benefits. If patterns are not yet in use, prototype them and measure success. Where they are in use, document case studies of successful use. Communicate the value of patterns in design documentation. Be specific about the savings of drawing on existing patterns, and the additional value those savings enable. * Build an evidence base. Record time and budget savings. Understand the perspectives and needs of executive decision-makers, determine what they value and measure and report on that. * Use the language that fits your organisational culture and the culture for decision-makers. That may be around risk-reduction. Be clear about the costs of not using patterns. * Invest in change management. Any change is challenging. Create supporters through the design and build process, bring users on the journey, share the patterns early on with related design and non-design disciplines * Include patterns in recruitment and training strategies to make pattern-use business-as-usual. ## Meet, build and share Within the practical constraints of 4 hours of mini-conference, we were delighted with how much we could learn through sharing our knowledge and experiences. A significant benefit for the Australian and UK administrations was simply in meeting designers from other design capability centres and bridging internal silos. The chance to meet, build networks, and share experiences and lessons with international counterparts has built our respective capabilities and awareness of the benefits of patterns and how to maximise their successful use. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Inspired by the award-winning work of designers in the Ministry of Justice, our Policy Design Lab team in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs were keen to use system mapping to help policy colleagues make sense of their evidence base. But systems maps can be visually overwhelming, often only making sense to those making them. The Foresight Obesity Systems Map is an often-quoted example of this. As a result, they can sometimes feel alienating and ultimately lose their value and impact. We wanted to design a more participatory method of systems mapping that allowed a wider, more diverse group of colleagues to be involved in the sense making process. ## Innovating how evidence is mapped In our recent blog post, we described the challenges of evidence-based policy making that we’ve experienced on the Farming and Countryside Programme. In response, we ran a participatory workshop in June 2023 which combined systems mapping and serious games methods. Card swapping socialises insights We worked with professional games designer Matteo Menapace to design a participatory ‘evidence mapping’ workshop, that allowed 36 colleagues with little or no prior knowledge of systems mapping to explore the 150 individual insights and build their own evidence maps. An important part of the workshop was printing off our insights as individual ‘nuggets’ or ‘evidence cards’. In the first part of the workshop, we used simple card swapping activities to socialise the evidence base and get colleagues familiar with the breath of insights. One of our participants reflected on how this tactile approach allowed for a more engaging, collaborative experience of evidence review, for an activity which is often done in isolation in front of a computer: > “The fact that it was done with physical cards, physical activities, with us talking not looking at a screen much at all really, was very helpful. And it helped to maintain engagement levels.” > “The group exercise the way we did it, everyone going in turn, that mitigated any group issues that you always have were some people talk more than others. That was quite an innovative, creative way of doing a group exercise.” Group evidence mapping activity using the evidence ’nugget’ cards By the end of the day, colleagues had identified both the vicious and virtuous cycles that connect the individual insights: > __“It made it so easy to bring together so many diverse strands of thought that have emerged in the programme over time. As an analyst that was really useful because it really helped highlight the fact we’ve learnt an enormous amount and now the key thing is for us to home in on this question of our priorities, and what the scale of impact of all the different solutions that were being discussed around the tables might be.”__ ## Visualising system stories After the workshop we analysed the evidence maps and create an aggregated map identifying the underlying series of factors driving and blocking policy outcomes. Knowing how overwhelming systems maps can be to read, we then broke down the aggregated map into 8 smaller (but still connected) maps or ‘system stories’. Each told an important story in the evidence base that significantly impacts the policy outcomes. We made simple animated visuals of these system stories, allowing colleagues across the programme to appreciate how different insight ‘nuggets’ in the evidence impact each other. _Screenshot fromloopy showing how Defra interventions (green node) and non-government interventions (orange node), can drive environmental outcomes (purple node) via a chain of factors (yellow and blue nodes)._ The final framing was to introduce the notion of these system stories as ‘opportunity areas of work’ for the programme. This framing allowed us to identify and share new challenge questions (‘how might we...’) with the policy team to stimulate new thinking, ideas and hypotheses to test. It also allowed us to identify existing work, beyond the scope of our programme’s work. That is already working to flip the system stories, addressing some of its delivery risks. This highlighted an important aspect of systems thinking, which is considering where to usefully draw the boundary to a system, which might involve challenging assumptions and silos. ## Lessons for participatory mapping For us there were five key learning areas from this work: ### 1. Using multidisciplinary working to actively bridge the ‘policy-delivery gap’ Inviting professionals from both the policy and delivery disciplines to contribute to our evidence discovery and take part in the evidence mapping workshop was an effective way to avoid overlooking insights and generate a wider variety of hypotheses and ideas to test. It was also an active way of demonstrating the value of a multidisciplinary team upstream in the policy space. ### 2. Embracing visual and physical ways of learning We heard feedback during the evidence discovery that the visual images we used to theme the evidence helped people navigate and review the volume of evidence quickly. Similarly, we heard that the physical, tactile quality of printed evidence cards and the card swapping activities helped people digest and explore the insights in a more meaningful way than online workshops. These things reminded us of the value of investing in face-to-face working at points in a project when collective understanding and buy-in are critical to moving work forward. ### 3. Supporting knowledge management Our insights database will now be added to a new programme-wide insights library, being led by the User Research Community in Defra. Our project went further, showing the potential for an accessible, searchable insights library to form the basis of a whole range of creative, innovative policy making workshops that invite diverse groups of people to review evidence, make meaning and imagine new policy ideas to test. ### 4. Framing the analysis In our final playback we framed the system stories we’d identified as ‘opportunity areas of work’. However, on reflection, we’re learning that policy colleagues can often be more compelled to action by ‘risks’ and ‘mitigations’. This is an interesting and important learning for us about policymaker motivations, and how to inspire action from research and insights. ### 5. A note on language We deliberately chose not to use the language of ‘system mapping’ which can sometimes feel overly technical or alienating for those coming new to the method. Instead, we stuck with plain English, describing the logical next step of ‘mapping’ the evidence after our earlier evidence discovery workshop. ## Share your experience Those were our key takeaways from this work, but we’re also curious to know what your reflections are on this participatory approach to systems mapping * Could these ways of working be useful or relevant to your work? * Maybe you’ve already tried something similar? Let us know your thoughts below or email us: policydesignlab@defra.gov.uk ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Patterns are one of the oldest design technologies, and yet they hold huge potential for the future of governments. In summer 2025, 48 government design teams from around the world came together to examine this potential through a series of mini-conferences focused on different sectors—Education, Health, Justice, Business & Trade, Local Places, Cross-Government Services, Welfare, Policing, and Tax. The global Public Design Conference, jointly hosted by the UK Civil Service and the Royal College of Art, brought together over 200 participants in London to explore how design patterns could transform public services worldwide. The conference was part of the World Design Congress's Design Safari, bringing together over 200 participants — both in-person and online — to explore how design patterns could transform public services worldwide. ## The oldest design technology When we discuss patterns in government, it can seem like a relatively modern concept. But the idea of codifying and reusing what works runs deep in human history. Consider the Clovis points of prehistoric North America—fluted stone spearheads made 13,000 years ago, spread across vast distances in almost identical form. The point itself was the pattern, passed from maker to maker. Ancient Egypt used cubit rods—state-issued measuring sticks that ensured everyone worked to the same standard. Medieval guilds transmitted design knowledge through apprenticeships, guaranteeing quality and protecting craft reputations. Edo Japan's printed kimono catalogues enabled ordinary customers to browse designs and commission garments, scaling choice while allowing for local adaptation. In 1837, patterns became explicit government business. Britain established the Government School of Design (which became the Royal College of Art) to teach artisans how to apply patterns to ceramics and textiles. This was an industrial strategy—patterns as statecraft to make British goods competitive. In the 1960s, architect Christopher Alexander formalised this practice into "pattern languages"—documented, repeatable solutions for complex design challenges. This laid the foundation for how we think about design patterns today across architecture, software development, and service design. Patterns are among the oldest design technologies we have, carrying values that have always shaped how societies create, share, and govern. ## Taking patterns into the future The conference explored design patterns as "evidence-based solutions to common design problems" - reusable building blocks that help governments avoid reinventing the wheel and learn from each other's experiences. Our goal was to identify emerging patterns across different governments and explore opportunities for international collaboration in developing and sharing them. A key insight emerged: design patterns in government operate at multiple levels simultaneously. They exist as nested hierarchies - from micro-level digital interactions to macro-level life event journeys that span multiple agencies. Patterns function as containers within containers, offering reusable solutions that can scale from individual user actions to systemic reforms. The conference featured presentations from Christian Bason (Transition Collective), Sabine Junginger (Northumbria School of Design), and Nikola Goger and Martin Forde-Downs (Ministry of Justice). Teams from our summer mini-conferences shared their insights, and audience members participated in activities led by designer volunteers. You can watch this video to see what public design leaders say about the potential of patterns in government. ## Introducing our blog series on patterns Over the coming weeks, we'll publish blog posts from the international teams that formed during our conference season. These sector-specific public design teams explored what patterns are and how they might be used in the future. Each team developed a distinct vision of what that future could look like. * Business & Trade - From intent to impact: an international pattern * Local Places - Patterns for places * Policing - Comparing patterns across policing * Tax - Three countries, eight designers, nine insights * Welfare - Pattern principles in the welfare sector ## A volunteer-powered event Congratulations to everyone who made this happen. The event was coordinated by a dedicated team of volunteers led by Gael Welstead (HMRC), Mandy Gao (HMRC), Helen Simpson (GLA), Jessica Bergs (DSIT), Julie Aberdein (Defra), Tessa Fearnley (HMRC), Dejana Dragnic (HMRC), Komal Pahwa (HMRC), Stuart Bolton (DfE), Yemi Medeyinlo (MHCLG), Samuel Akintunde (Cabinet Office), Sam Villis (DHSC), Sally Stephens (UKHSA), Elli-ana Morley (MOD), Qing Wang (Defra), and Zara Bobat (HMRC), alongside community leaders who served as points of contact for each mini-conference. We're grateful to the School of Design at the Royal College of Art: Prof. Kerry Curtis (Dean), Prof. Qian Sun (Head of Service Design), Peter Christian (Head of Executive Education), Dr Nick de Leon (Knowledge Exchange), and Sophia March (Admin support), plus more than ten RCA Service Design graduates who contributed their expertise. We are proud to be part of a brilliant series of events organised by World Design Organization and Design Council. And finally, thank you to the participating government design teams from the UK and around the world. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

We are challenging ourselves to think about how we might create a vision for a local welfare system that is rooted in Camden Council’s values of empowerment and empathy. A welfare system that starts from how we can give everyone the tools to create a fulfilled and happy life for themselves, rather than focusing on dealing with the symptoms when things go wrong. Building a preventative and strengths-based welfare state is not something you can do overnight — and what that can look like will be a question with lots of answers. Camden’s leadership believes we have a responsibility to advocate for a future our residents want to see; one which enables people to thrive, tackles poverty, and supports inclusive growth, so we have been asking those “what” and “how” questions. By working with colleagues at UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity, we have been looking at their model of Universal Basic Services (UBS), what it might look like in a local context, and how it could change local residents’ experience of public services. ## Universal basis services for local residents The premise of UBS is simple. Our welfare state needs to respond to people’s lives, and the opportunities and challenges of our current and future communities. The last widespread welfare reforms happened in the 1940s, and in many important ways we don’t work, relate, travel or look after ourselves in the same ways we did then. We shouldn’t expect a welfare state created for the needs of a different world to produce the best outcomes in our modern context. The hard questions are: what would work for our present world? …and what will continue working for the next generation? …and the one after that? Our work is looking at these questions in 5 different ways: 1. What could a local welfare settlement for the 21st century - founded on the principles of Universal Basic Services - look like?​ 2. How might citizens’ voices shape the design of a new local welfare system?​ 3. Is a new, local, universal welfare system deliverable with the existing capabilities and​ powers that are available to local authorities?​ 4. What additional capabilities, powers, or resources might be needed to make​ it deliverable?​ 5. What might the impact of this kind of system be on an individual, a household, or a community? Policy designers are designing for this third horizon by building a vision for how we might respond to these challenges, and proposing a roadmap for how we get there. ## Moving toward the third horizon The concept of the third horizon comes from Bill Sharpe and the work of the International Futures Forum, and it helps us think through how changes to our status quo happen over time. It moves us from the now (Horizon 1) into our ambitious future vision we want to create (Horizon 3), taking us through the messy transition space (Horizon 2) of how we get there. It’s a particularly useful framework in work like this, when it feels like the change we might create is too big to grasp, and would involve widespread reform across many parts of our society and a large number of government departments and public institutions. Our work as third horizon policy designers is split into three tasks: 1. **Defining our vision for the future** - This is a lot like defining our missions - it’s about creating a north star of what we are aiming for. At Camden, we believe the most powerful north stars are created by involving a range of perspectives, from our residents to our frontline staff, and we work with both to develop it. 2. **Understanding the present (and past)** - We believe in the power of not reinventing the wheel - and we know that when we’re talking about public sector innovation there is a lot of great work and ideas that we can draw from to learn and build-on. We collaborated with service leaders to understand what’s working well from their perspective, and we had honest conversations with our residents about services they love and sometimes feel frustration. 3. **Setting the direction of travel** - This is perhaps the most traditional design task - looking at the vision we created, and our starting point, then creating a roadmap for how we might move from A to B. This will often be through very small tests and experimentation rather than sweeping changes… but more on this below. We learnt a lot from working through these tasks with a wide group of stakeholders. Residents’ voices are central to our policy design practice. In a project like this, it’s essential for us that the vision for the future comes from our residents and their experiences. Translating the academic framework of UBS into a set of principles that could guide conversations with local residents enabled us to co-design with them in a meaningful way and discuss concrete ideas. ## Eating the elephant While we gained huge amounts of insight into residents’ lived experiences and hopes for the future, holding these kinds of conversations invites tensions that reflect the fact that the shape and scope of public services can be highly political and can have highly personal consequences. In this context, it is challenging, if not impossible, to separate conversations about the future of public services from conversations about values. Our job, as policy designers, is to create a safe and welcoming environment in which those tensions can be surfaced and resolved in a way that generates insight, connection, and learning rather than discord, frustration, and alienation. So how might the evidence and insight we have from working in and alongside our communities be used to inform system-level change? How might we effectively engage with actors beyond Camden to build cases for change that would have a positive impact for people in our borough? Thinking about designing for every policy change we would like to see feels a bit like eating an elephant — it’s too much all at once. It’s the type of task that should be approached systematically, and different parts of it will need different tools and methods. So our approach categorises issues that are for “now”, i.e. immediate issues that can be addressed in the near future, and issues that are for “next”, i.e. longer-term reform. Issues that are for “now” and “next” can also be categorised as being “active” or “reactive”, depending on whether we are taking the initiative to build something new that we want to see or whether we are acting in response to something. The framework looks something like this: This framework gives us is a mental model to think about different methods to approach different issues, depending on where they sit in the quadrant. Our work on UBS sits in the top-right corner. The future of the welfare state is a “next” issue, for which we are looking at ideas for long-term reform. This is also an issue that we have chosen to focus on, recognising that it is critically important for our community’s future wellbeing, so it sits in an “active” space. Our method for this kind of issue is test-bed innovation: exploring how our ideas might work in practice through experimental methods. By starting with small-scale experimentation and gradually scaling up, collecting evidence and insight as we go, our ambition is to generate evidence about impact and deliverability that helps us build an evidence-based vision for the future. ## Policy designing the future Our ambition is that our design practice adds to the conversation about what we want public services to look like in the future, how we should address poverty and inequality, and how we might foster resilient communities that are equipped for the challenges of the 2020s and beyond. You can read in more depth about our teams’ work in our blog series: The future is now, From theory to practice, and Eating the Elephant. We’d love to hear from anyone interested in finding out more about the challenges our team is working on and how we might work together. Please comment below if you would like to get in touch. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

There are important signs of energy at the edges of the government system, according to writer James Plunkett. These are initiatives and movements that are firmly flourishing, yet not quite mainstream. They are “pockets of vitality” in governments that can sometimes struggle to reform at pace. James points to design as one of these bright spots …and I agree! To my mind, design sits firmly in the category of up-and-coming social and political initiatives that address the great challenges of the moment. Let’s unpack how. ## **Recap: what is design for** In our modern world of pluralism and market choice, most people regularly have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ experiences. It’s almost universally recognised that a process could be anywhere from very good (convenient, slick, enjoyable) to very poor (maddening, broken, frustrating). It might be argued that design only exists to fix bad experiences. If everything was already optimised, we wouldn't need any designers. Thus we can sum up design's _raison d’etre_ as 'where there are experiences that are intended to achieve outcomes, we should tailor them to best achieve that outcome'. ## Design has taken on new importance over time The term design was primarily used in reference to products and components. But as western economies shifted their focus from goods to services, the discipline of design mirrored the change, increasingly encompassing information, interventions and holistic ‘customer experiences’ in addition to physical products. Design in this broad sense is one of the underpinning disciplines of our era… but why? **Making new technologies usable** - One reason is that organisations wishing to expand the use of new technologies - whether their motives are to do with productivity, education, profit, efficiency or something else - find that their objectives are more easily met when designers think about how non-technical users can master new tools and integrate them into their workflow. **Navigating complexity** - A second driver of growth in design is that globalisation and technology have created a more networked, complex world. The more variables are introduced into a system, the harder it is for humans to understand it, and the more they need it to be specifically designed to be manageable. A system for connecting, say, two doctors and fifty patients is the sort of task a single receptionist can set up and handle. Introducing a national phone service into an existing operational healthcare system with thousands of possible outcomes, like NHS111, requires a different magnitude of design capability. **Responding to change** - Finally, a third driver of growth in design has been the need to re-establish successful delivery pathways in systems whose activities were upended by shocks, financial crises and disruptive reorganisations. There are a number of case studies from UK local government showing how failing or risky services have been reimagined in a deliberate way (like _Liberated Method_ , _Radical Help_ , or _Only we can save the state_). It’s important to note that it was not incompetent management or staff that caused these transformations to be necessary, but systemic factors that fundamentally altered the paradigm in which the services were previously operating. In a world where systemic shocks are becoming increasingly common, we may well find that investing in design and re-design is increasingly necessary. ## Connecting design with other movements Coming from a public-sector digital government background, I’ve always found it strange that there isn’t more recognition of the synergies between the digital/design and local/civic agendas. I suspect this is because ‘digitisation’ has earned a bad reputation for imposing one-size-fits-all change. Careless digitisation sets back the efforts of those digital and design professionals who are committed to fundamental principles in which technology is balanced with human needs. This brings us back to the list of “pockets of vitality”. All are concerned with exploring human needs - for civic participation, for a fair distribution of scarce resources, for control over their data, for agency in the place they call home. We could say they add up to one philosophy: that excellent public service means leveraging the full potential of communities, individuals, places and technologies to achieve the outcomes we want, at a price we can afford. If we fail to do this, we will be at significant risk of intensifying dehumanisation and dissatisfaction, with knock-on impacts to trust and democracy. _Are you a reader from outside the ‘design’ space? Reach out to us via the comments. How could the public design network connect with other movements?_ ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

This September, we’re bringing government designers together from around the world for a first-of-its-kind conference. We’re inviting designers like you – working in local, regional, national and international governments – to join us for a practical conversation about the future of design in government. The global**Public Design Conference** , on 11 September 2025, is part of the World Design Congress Design Safari. It will connect public sector designers working across disciplines, countries and levels of government. You’ll be able to attend in person at the Royal College of Art in London, or online from wherever you are. We’ve been working with more than 100 designers in 48 government teams over the summer to build a network of global collaboration. This conference is your chance to meet them, learn from their experiences, and share your own. **Register here for your free ticket to the Public Design Conference.** ## Why we’re focusing on public design patterns The theme of this year’s conference is **global public design patterns**. Design patterns are solutions to recurring problems in services and policies. They are evidence-based, tested approaches that help designers and teams avoid reinventing the wheel. Patterns give us a shared language for solving design problems efficiently and consistently across governments. They are practical building blocks for improving how governments deliver outcomes. At the conference, we’ll explore how these patterns are emerging across different governments, and how we can collaborate internationally to improve and share them. ## Who you’ll hear from We’re bringing together design leaders from government and academia who’ve been advancing public design in their countries and organisations. Our keynote speakers include: **Christian Bason** , Co-founder of Transition Collective and Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology Sydney **Sabine Junginger** , Professor at Northumbria School of Design **Nikola Goger** , Head of Design at the UK’s Ministry of Justice And our hosts will be: **Andrew Knight** , Head of Policy Design for the UK Civil Service **Nicolás Rebolledo** , Associate Professor in Service Design and Design Futures at the Royal College of Art You’ll also hear from the 48 international teams who have been taking part in our series of summer mini-conferences – sharing their patterns, their learning and their practical challenges. And, perhaps most importantly, you’ll meet other designers working in government and have the chance to build new collaborations. ## Why now For the first time public policy and service design will be showcased at the World Design Congress, which has been highlighting the value of design for 34 years. The Congress is hosted by the UK’s Design Council in London and will be followed by a ‘Design Safari’ of events and activations that dive deeper into this year’s crucial _Design for Planet_ theme. Our Public Design Conference on the 11th of September features in the Design Safari and will bring together designers from around the world to explore how public design in government can help solve some of the most complex public challenges we face today. ## How to take part The conference will take place on **11 September 2025** , hosted by the Royal College of Art in London, the world’s top-ranked design university and a member of the World Design Organization. We know not everyone can travel to London, so the event will be fully hybrid. You’ll be able to take part online and contribute to the discussions and workshops from wherever you are. Tickets for the Global Public Design Conference are **free** , but are **limited to designers working in government**. You’ll also get free online access to the World Design Congress, with the option to purchase a discounted in-person Congress ticket if you wish. **Register here for your free ticket to the Public Design Conference.** ## Help us shape the future of public design Designers in government are solving some of the world’s most important problems – but we don’t have to do it alone. By sharing patterns and learning from one another, we can make our work better, faster and more sustainable. Join us in September to help build the next chapter of global public design. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Last month, the UK Civil Service took part in the London Design Biennale for the first time - showcasing policy design to a global public audience. Our pavilion, designed and delivered by the cross-government Policy Design Community with support from the Government Digital Service, brought together designers from across disciplines. Together, we demonstrated how design can support better public outcomes. ## **Building design capability across government** As well as sharing our work publicly, we welcomed around 200 government designers to the exhibition throughout June. Many visited as part of organised learning and development groups - creating opportunities to connect with peers, share experiences and take inspiration back to their day jobs. One designer told us: > “It was lovely to meet other government designers yesterday at the London Design Biennale. I had a really nice time - thanks for a fab afternoon! Thank you to the Policy Design team for the opportunity - it was such an interesting event to attend.” Another added: > “Great for the public to be included in these things, important for those thinking about joining government or design” ## **Exploring serious games for policy challenges** At the heart of the UK pavilion was a series of live, interactive workshops, open to the public and running throughout the month. Every session sold out ...and demand was high enough for us to run additional spontaneous sessions too. The workshops showcased how _serious games_ - structured, purpose-driven games - can help co-design effective public policy. The approach builds on Policy Lab’s 2022 collaboration with game designer Matteo Menapace, which helped create a sustainable fisheries management plan for sea bass through gameplay. This year, our “Serious Game to Save the Planet” workshops invited participants to explore complex climate challenges through collaborative play. Over 100 people from across the world took part, including professionals from government, academia, journalism, science, advertising and design. Using serious games, we created a safe, engaging space where people could explore trade-offs, challenge assumptions, and listen to diverse perspectives. For complex, high-stakes policy challenges - especially those impacting many communities - this approach offers a powerful way to co-design solutions. ## **Celebrating design leadership in government** We also hosted a special reception at Somerset House, bringing together 50 design leaders from across the Civil Service. The evening was a chance to celebrate their work and share early plans for our new design school …set to launch later this year. Speakers from government and partner organisations reflected on the growing role of design in shaping effective, user-centred policies and services. Guests were invited to feed into the emerging direction of the school, helping shape its future as a shared, cross-government offer. It was a brilliant opportunity to connect, reflect and look ahead to the next chapter for design in government - not to mention enjoy a moment of summer sunshine on the Somerset House terrace. ## **Powered by our community** This was a milestone month for the Policy Design Community - and it wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible efforts of our volunteer team. From planning and curation to delivery and facilitation, community members gave their time, energy and expertise to make it all happen. We want to thank everyone who supported the event - especially our brilliant workshop team: Andrew Knight (curator), Elli-ana Morley (event manager), Dejana Draganic, Mandy Gao, Tessa Fearnley, Qing Wang, Yemi Medeyinlo, Nia Thomas, Komal Pahwa, Stuart Bolton, Laura Pearson, William Milton, Sandeep Singh, and many more who’ve helped shape and grow this work over the years. Plus Policy Lab for producing a film that gives insight into how public design work in practice. Special thanks also to the London Design Biennale team, and their partners at Frog Design, for making the UK Civil Service’s first Biennale pavilion such a success. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

You don’t have to be a designer to use or to care about design. In fact, most people who are doing the most powerful design work in our public services don’t call themselves designers at all. They’re council workers, service managers, health workers. What they have in common is that they’re changing how public services and places are created by starting with the people who use them. This is what public design is about. And it’s at the core of the Design Council’s latest report, Public Design Beyond Central Government _._ Public design is not just a strategy or concept, but something hands-on and increasingly urgent. Because if we want to tackle the climate and nature crises, improve health outcomes, and restore public trust, we must change how we work. Design is one of the best tools we’ve got. ## **What we did** Over 2022-2024, the Design Council worked with the UK's Civil Service, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and a group of leading design academics on a review of design in the public sector. We ran a nation-wide survey of 1,000 public sector workers, contributed our case studies and evidence, and held workshops with public sector designers to explore and distil values, challenges, and recommendations. Our focus was on those outside central government: Local authorities, the NHS, the police, emergency services, and other bodies. ## **So, what is public design?** Design is _not_ just about logos or apps (though those things matter too). Design in the public sector is about working differently in starting with people’s needs. It’s about listening, co-creating, testing ideas early, learning from what doesn’t work, and adjusting as we go. It’s about understanding how people _actually_ experience public services and places; and then reshaping them to make them better. You might hear this called “service design,” “policy design,” “co-design,” or even “strategic design.” But at its core, it’s just this: > Design is how we make decisions about what to do – and how to do it – in a way that makes life better for people and the planet. Design is not confined to one role or job title either. As our survey showed, 58% of public sector workers already use design in some way, even if only 13% would call themselves experts. Overall, an impressive 88% of the public sector say design plays a role in their organisation. ## **What design looks like in action** Let’s look at a couple of examples of what this means in the real world. * **In Amble, Northumberland** , local people helped reimagine their town after a major employer shut down. With the help of the Design Council and their local authority, they co-designed a vision for a food and tourism destination. That design-led regeneration brought in new businesses, created jobs, and helped the town win High Street of the Year. * **In Staffordshire** , design helped the council better support children at risk. Families, service providers, and local partners worked together to redesign how early years services were delivered. A new approach reduced stigma, increased engagement by 300%, and brought “hidden” children into view. * **At Transport for London** , staff used design methods to rethink occupational health services. By listening to employees and testing small changes, they made it easier for workers to access health checks, leading to better prevention and stronger relationships between departments. These aren’t stories about design as a nice-to-have but as a way of working: Understanding the problem rather than jumping to solutions. ## **This matters now** Public services are under pressure: Budgets are shrinking; demand is rising; people’s trust is wobbling. This could be the moment when organisations retreat, cutting what they see as extras. But cutting design would be a mistake. Design helps avoid costly errors by catching problems early. It builds public trust by involving people in shaping the services and places they use. It creates more joined-up, efficient systems by helping teams work across siloes. And it gives public servants the confidence to test, learn, and adapt. Because no complex challenge can be solved with a one-size-fits-all plan. As the report puts it: _“There’s no greater waste of public money than to have the best solution to the wrong problem.”_ ## **A design-literate government** We’re seeing a growing movement of public servants embracing design. The Design Council has worked with over 100 councils across England, building design capacity from the ground up. But to make this stick, design needs to be treated as a core capability. That means: * Creating senior design roles in public bodies – people who can champion and scale good design. * Investing in training for all public servants so they can understand and use design approaches. * Making it easier to procure good design work and to connect with local design talent. * Building shared standards, frameworks, and communities of practice. * Making space for testing, iteration, and feedback loops so that new ideas don’t just sit in a drawer. ## **The bottom line** Design isn’t a silver bullet. But without it, mission-led government risks becoming just another set of slogans. Design is how we build public services and places _with_ people, not _for_ them. It’s how we make smarter decisions, moving from intention to impact. And how we make those hard missions – net zero, healthy lives, safe streets – a little more achievable. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

‘Design for policy’ and ‘policy design’ are key concepts among civil servants, academics and others engaged in the issues and practices featured in this blog. My question is: why not design for polity, with ‘ty’ at the end, as well as design for policy, with ‘cy’? By design for polity, I mean design of the formal political system: design for processes and organisations of democratic governance itself – such as government departments and agencies and parliamentary bodies, and the links between them. As opposed to the design of specific policies _within_ , and which largely take as given, the existing institutions of democratic government. ## Democracy designs do not have to be radical ‘Design of democracy’ and ‘polity design’ may sound like unfeasibly grand enterprises. But design of polity need not be seen as radical. It does not have to be whole-system design but can be part-system and single-institution design. Think of reconfiguring government departments in ministerial reshuffles, or the devolution and House of Lords reform proposals in the Gordon Brown-led _Commission on the future of the UK_, published in 2022, or further plans for Lords reform proposed by the Starmer government. The polity/policy distinction (blurred as it is) does _not_ imply further distinctions (big/small, macro/micro, system/people, or important/less important, for example). The tools in my ‘democratic design framework’ can be used to think about design of small town council governance, or reconfiguring a government department or agency, as much as restructuring governance at the national level. ## **Policy design helps people participate in democracy** Policy design involves close and imaginative engagement with ideas of democracy, framed for example in terms of co-production, participatory design or citizen engagement in defining problems and devising solutions. Notable design thinkers and practitioners are more explicit in invoking ‘democracy’. When they do, arguably they embrace the work of design for polity, as well as for policy. However, they often frame the state or national government as suspicious, remote, perhaps even undemocratic. Design practice embracing _local_ communities is valued, while indirect or representative relations are suspect. The focus is on democracy _as_ local, community based, about ordinary people, working with design professionals, acting together to create new public things and public spaces. Ezio Manzini’s emphasis on democratisation as action in ‘small local open communities’ is one example; Carl DiSalvo’s similar emphasis on local action is another. In Alistair Fuad-Like’s terms, ‘taking micro-steps locally with people’ is design’s democratic task. To this trend, I would say… Yes to democracy as action and engaging ordinary people and their concerns at the scale of the local community. But I question whether that focus should prevent designers paying attention to how democracy is (or could be) structured larger scales such as that of national government. Design thinking about democracy need not be restricted to the local scale. ## Democracy itself can benefit from design too The reasons that design thinking and practice is often highly valued – openness to people and ideas, participation and shared inquiry, pooling knowledge, imagination, creating innovative solutions - can be elements of polity or government, at large as well as smaller scales. Democracy – including a democratic polity - can also be a _product_ of design. It is, already, designed, and can be redesigned. So, democracy plus design is not a matter of either-or: _either_ local _or_ nation-state; either process or product. It can be ‘ _both-and’_ : both participative and representative, local and supra-local, process and product. And small scale does not match exclusively with face-to-face participatory design. Designers can work with participatory design at the larger, national scale – Citizens Assemblies’ crucial role in Ireland’s recent dealing with constitutional issues such as abortion may be an example. That said, design work on institutions or procedures for the democratic polity does not need to be conducted _wholly_ democratically. Designing for democracy (the ‘product’), and designing democratically (the ‘process’), are different things that may or may not be pursued together. By the same token, expertise and representation are not anti-democratic and can be compatible with participatory or co-design. A turn to design and the democratic polity could take different forms. Some of these are expressed, for example, in Margolin and Manzini’s 2017 call to ‘the design community’: > "We do not have to share exactly the same idea of what democracy is: to defend it as a core value, it is enough to recognize the strong convergence between democracy and design in four respects: **design of democracy** - improving democratic processes and the institutions on which democracy is built; **design for democracy** - enabling more people to participate in the democratic process, especially through the use of technology; **design in democracy** - building access, openness and transparency into institutions in ways that assure equality and justice; **design as democracy** - the practise of participatory design so that diverse actors can shape our present and future worlds in fair and inclusive ways." Policy design, as it is most familiar in government today, is perhaps most clear a part of design _in_ democracy.  I am advocating an opening to design _of_ democracy. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

People are sensitive to how public services treat them. They evaluate whether the processes they experience are fair in a way that is distinct from the outcomes they may receive. In turn, people’s evaluation of whether processes in public services are fair can shape their attitudes and behaviours over time, including towards government more broadly. These attitudes and behaviours can then have large-scale impacts on society, as well as the capacity of government to deliver policy. For the last few years, my research group (Administrative Fairness Lab) has been striving to understand more about the public’s perceptions of fair process in the context of public services. ## Being treated fairly is personal It’s helpful to make this more concrete. Imagine a person with a disability who is in part-time work. They rely on support through the benefits systems, must have regular healthcare appointments, and are entitled to a range of other forms of support and exemptions from the government. If this person were to perceive that benefits or healthcare processes were persistently treating them unfairly (even if they were ultimately getting the benefits and healthcare they were entitled to) it is likely to affect their attitudes and behaviours towards these and other services. They might, for instance, be less willing to reach out to these services, take up other entitlements they ought to have access to, or be less engaged when those services ask for something to be done. In turn, this can reduce the capability of services to effectively deliver. ## The consequences of perception There are many reasons why it is important to understand if this theory plays out in reality. Given the millions of interactions between individuals and public services every day, the potential scale of these effects is significant and diverse. At the same time, it is often suggested that - while many do - many services are perceived by users as not implementing fair processes. It is also common to see a (well-intentioned) assumption that people focus on outcomes, not processes, when accessing public services. While it is true that outcomes matter, public service processes are more than just a mechanism to get somebody the outcome they are entitled to as efficiently as possible. ## Fair policing There is one field where this theory has been widely proven: frontline policing. Following the pioneering work of Tom Tyler, there is now ample evidence that frontline police officers play a crucial role in shaping public perceptions of the legal system. The way police treat individuals during encounters - whether fairly, respectfully, and without bias- influences people's willingness to comply with the law. When individuals feel that police officers are procedurally fair, they view them as more legitimate authorities. This legitimacy increases voluntary compliance with laws, as people obey not out of fear of punishment but because they trust the system and believe it is just. This approach obviously has systemic benefits not only for society but for government; it is premised on a less resource-intensive form of policing. ## Improving the NHS There is also growing evidence for this theory in other areas, such as healthcare. Studies have linked, for instance, perceptions of fair process in treatment with higher levels of adherence to medical advice and also to better results in weight management programmes. Most of these studies have been done in the US, but in the UK, the NHS is one of the most significant points of interaction between the public and public bodies, and administrative processes are too often an afterthought. Take, for instance, GP’s booking appointments. In 2023, NHS England estimated that general practice delivered 353 million appointments across the year, but appointment booking processes are of highly variable quality, often leaving people frustrated. There are grounds to think increasing perceptions of procedural fairness in systems like these could be good for health outcomes and good for the NHS overall. ## Willingly paying into the system Tax researchers have also found evidence to support this theory. Seeking to explore the potential of alternatives to direct enforcement approaches, researchers across the world have become increasingly interested in how voluntary adherence to tax rules can be increased and whether reform that increases perceptions of procedural fairness could achieve this. One leading study found that taxpayers who believed that they were treated fairly and respectfully by tax authorities were more likely to perceive the tax system as legitimate. This perception of legitimacy, in turn, was a significant predictor of voluntary tax compliance. Moreover, these people were more willing to comply with tax laws, even in the absence of direct enforcement or penalties. Conversely, when taxpayers felt unfairly treated, they were more likely to resist compliance. ## Helping people back to work We have been conducting a large study of perceptions of claimants’ perceptions of fair process in Universal Credit, which has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation. As part of this work, we have developed a better understanding of what fair process means in this context. Moreover, we have found associations between perceptions of fair process and a range of important behavioural and attitudinal outcomes amongst claimants. We found that perceptions of fair process were positively associated with claimants being willing to share information and cooperate with the DWP, being willing to complain or appeal, and having a positive relationship with work. In relation to the latter, claimants who perceive they have been subject to fair processes were more likely to report that the Universal Credit system helped them to feel more confident about finding a job or better-paid work, has raised their long-term work-related ambitions, and increased their motivation to leave Universal Credit by finding a job or better-paid work. Further work is required to evidence these links but initial evidence points to how fair process can help and hinder the effective implementation of some of Universal Credit’s central policy goals. ## Process design must be part of policymaking There is much more we need to understand about the effects of fair process in public services, and this discussion raises a host of complex questions about how such perceptions are formed across different settings. But we are at a point where we should be starting to think differently about fair process in public services and what value it has. Far too often, public bodies draw too sharp of a line between law-making/policymaking and the processes designed to allow people to access the benefits of those laws and policies. This typically reduces user design to narrow questions of implementation. Our research, and the research of others, suggests fair process in public services has important substantive effects and, in this way, ought to be seen as part and parcel of substantive social and economic policy. Viewed from this perspective, achieving greater alignment between the procedural fairness expectations of the public and the delivery of government should be central to law-making, policymaking, and attempts to increase the capacity of government to deliver transformative change. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Evidence-based policy making relies on robust, diverse research insights to inform policy ideas and decision making. But that’s easier said than done, particularly for complex policy challenges with evidence that contains many different actors and factors influencing the outcomes. This is the first of a two-part blog post where we’ll explain the combination of methods we’ve tested to review and make sense of a complex evidence base with a wider group of people on our programme. In this first post, we’ll describe the challenges of evidence-based policy making we’ve experienced on the Farming and Countryside Programme and explain the steps we took to prepare for a participatory evidence mapping workshop. In the second post, we’ll explain how we designed, ran and analysed the evidence mapping workshop, combining systems thinking and serious games. ## Why is evidence-based policy making challenging? Evidence-based policy making is an important aspiration referenced in the HM Treasury's Green Book, but it presents practical challenges for policy teams working under pressure which we’ve experienced first-hand on our programme: * There is often an overwhelming volume of evidence for policy teams to consider in a short space of time * Policy teams might not be aware of all the evidence sources on a particular subject, which can come from multiple government research professions, disciplines and teams, including but not limited to: user research, social research, behavioral science, and customer insights * The granular insights that policy teams need for evidence-based policy making are often contained within long research reports and slide decks. Even with access to the right documents, it is labour intensive for policy teams to extract and synthesis insights * For complex policy areas (like farming and land management), policy teams can struggle to build a collective understanding of the complex, inter-related nature of the insights within the evidence base These challenges present risks for policy teams. Without a holistic view of the evidence, we can introduce assumptions and bias. For complex policy areas, a lack of methods to collectively make sense of complexity in the evidence base, can lead to siloed policy ideas and interventions which don’t make sense in delivery, for end users or frontline workers. Equally, for research colleagues, they can experience frustration if policy colleagues aren’t aware of their work which can lead to duplication of effort if new research is commissioned without knowledge of existing evidence. This also risks undermining trust in government if citizens are engaged in research on the same issues multiple times. ## How can policy teams gather robust and complex evidence bases and make sense of them? In response to these challenges faced by our policy teams, we asked ourselves: * What if policymakers could easily engage with all the evidence a programme holds? * What if they could make sense of relationships between different pieces of evidence? * What if they could use that understanding to identify opportunity areas to test a range of complementary government policy ideas and interventions? To address these challenges and support our policy colleagues in their work, we designed and tested a four-phase participatory methodology to allow our policy team to make sense of their complex and extensive evidence base and come up with a portfolio of policy ideas to test and learn from. We’ll explain the first two stages of this methodology below which cover the evidence gathering activities. In the next blog we’ll explain the evidence mapping workshop itself. ## Evidence discovery Inspired by Policy Lab’s collaborative evidence discovery method, we first hosted an online evidence discovery workshop, inviting any colleagues on our programme who might have research related to our policy challenge. Screenshot of our online evidence discovery workshop We used an online whiteboard tool to populate an ‘evidence gallery’ with all the evidence the policy team currently held. In the workshop, we allowed time for everyone to explore and read through the evidence gallery, inviting them to add any evidence or specific insights they thought were missing This first workshop helped us to quickly grow a more robust and diverse evidence base, drawing on the breadth and diversity of knowledge, experience and research disciplines in our programme. ## Insight ‘nuggets’ After the online evidence discovery workshop, we were inspired by Tomar Sharon and Benjamin Gadbaw’s work on the atomic unit of a research insight. They argue that insight ‘nuggets’ (rather than research reports) are the most useful, actionable unit of research. And they’ve shown how research operations can evolve to extract insight ‘nuggets’ that become readily available to organisations to answer a whole range of questions and challenges over time. Screenshot of our database of evidence insights or ‘nuggets’ We distilled our evidence into an online searchable database of 150 individual insights, tagged with themes, and with referenced sources. We now had a much richer and more accessible evidence base, that we could use to underpin the activities. To enable a group of people to use these insight ‘nuggets’ in our evidence mapping workshop we printed them out as individual ‘evidence cards’. This physical, tactile format allowed the evidence to be easily and quickly socialised and deliberated among participants in a more nuanced and dynamic way compared to our experiences attempting to run to similar activities online. * * * In our next blog post we will detail how we worked with professional games designer Matteo Menapace to design our participatory ‘evidence mapping’ workshop, that allowed 36 colleagues with little or no prior knowledge of systems mapping to explore the 150 insights nuggets and build their own maps. **If you would like to find out more about this project, or others undertaken by Defra’s Policy Design Lab, get in touch! Equally we’d love to hear about any similar approaches you’ve been testing for evidence collection and review. Please email****policydesignlab@defra.gov.uk****.** ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Today we’re proud to celebrate a landmark: our 100th post on the Public Policy Design blog. Over 4-years, this blog (aimed at people who use design in government) has become a place to share practical tools, honest reflections and bold experiments. As we look back on the first 99 entries by 78 public design practitioners and researchers, seven themes keep surfacing in our community’s writing. Understanding these patterns helps us sharpen our craft and focus our energies on what truly moves the needle for citizens. ## Multidisciplinary collaboration is a fundamental Nearly every post on team building underscores the value of bringing together diverse expertise. From ‘Do you need multidisciplinary policy design?’ to hands‑on case studies, authors describe how policymakers, designers, researchers and delivery managers can break down silos. When these professionals collaborate, they uncover richer insights and prevent handover friction. Yet many still describe battles over budgets, siloed organisations and unclear ownership. Embedding true cross‑functional practice remains a top priority for our community. ## Evidence and research rigor earns trust “Show me the evidence” is a constant refrain across the blog. From our very first post, ‘What does it mean to transform policy making?’ where we saw structured literature reviews, to other posts that dive into rapid user research interviews, data‑driven pilots and mass‑participation platforms. Rigorous research builds credibility with colleagues and ministers alike. Our collective task is to refine research methods that are both deep enough to surface key insights and light enough to keep momentum going. Our authors’ shared insistence on grounding decisions in real‑world evidence (rather than assumptions) underpins many success stories. ## Embracing systems thinking & complexity Moving beyond linear project management, our writers consistently frame policy challenges as complex systems. In ‘Systems thinking for policymaking’ and other posts, you’ll find maps of systems and feedback loops that teach us how interventions ripple across sectors like housing, health or justice. This mindset shift - from “complicated” to “complex”- reminds us to design for adaptability, monitor unintended consequences, build resilience into our work, and seek long‑term impact, and not to simply design for expediency. ## Putting citizens and places first Embedding people and places at the heart of policy is essential. Posts on co‑design workshops and local labs show how understanding peoples’ lived experience can yield legitimate, equitable outcomes. For example, ‘11 things policymakers need to improve outcomes for citizens’ offers concrete tactics for involving users from problem framing through to prototyping. Similarly, place‑based projects (whether urban regeneration pilots or rural service redesigns) demonstrate that context matters. Tailoring approaches to community realities builds trust and increases access to public services, whilst acting as a safety valve to mitigate inadvertent bias from policy teams who may not have the same characteristics as the citizens they serve. ## Innovation & agile mindsets break bureaucratic gridlock In world where policy can sometimes look like it is stuck in a rut of entrenched behaviours and legacy systems, our blog has been a champion of experimentation and rapid prototyping. In ‘Hacking the policymaking system’, contributors share how short sprints and low‑fidelity pilots can de‑risk big bets. These posts emphasize that agility isn’t a fad but a survival skill: quick feedback loops help us learn faster, correct course early and build evidence for scaling. Yet shifting culture requires leaders who tolerate experimentation and budget lines that fund iterative work. ## Aligning policy with delivery for public value Too often, brilliant policy advice stalls in implementation. A string of articles on HM Treasury’s public value framework and public services mapping have converged on one lesson: policy design and delivery must be woven together. Designers are a catalyst for helping policymakers and frontline delivery workers to join-up strategy and co‑define success metrics. This helps citizens to see real improvements and departments to hit targets faster. Posts like ‘The final frontier for policy design’ offer advice on how to close the gap between _what we say we’ll do_ and _what citizens actually experience_. ## Building capability and changing culture All transformation hinges on people. Over 30 posts explore up‑skilling, including teaching design methods, creating communities of practice, and leadership models that champion diversity and inclusion. In ‘What does it take to be a Public Designer?’ the author considers what characteristics designers in government often have; these are sometimes quite different from relatively close colleagues in the world of policymaking or commercial design. Transforming how policy is made requires new skills, mindsets and a culture that rewards innovation rather than process compliance. ## Here’s to the next 100 As we celebrate 100 posts, these themes (collaboration, evidence, systems thinking, citizen focus, innovation, delivery integration and capability building) form the backbone of our practice. Thank you to our brilliant editorial board, and every author, commenter and reader who has shaped this community. Here’s to continuing our journey of designing public policy that truly works for citizens. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

Young people are an important stakeholder group for the Department for Education. Empowering them to play a part in education policymaking requires the use of special design methods that allow them to meaningfully contribute. Immersive and sensory activities, creative mapping, and physical 3D-printed objects can all help pupils to participate. Engaging them in this way uncovers unique insight into their experiences and inspires actionable change. ## Design methods made for young people The department’s Education Policy Innovation Centre (EPIC) specialises in bringing participation, design and innovation into the policymaking process to fulfil the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunities. We use co-design to create opportunities for policymakers to engage with young people’s ideas. Co-design values participants as experts of their own experience. It creates an environment of mutual respect and equal participation. ## Exploring pupils’ feeling of belonging We recently undertook a research project to better understand the sense of belonging among teenage (Year 10) pupils in schools. By using a mixture of participatory methods, EPIC not only explored pupils’ experiences but also actively engaged and empowered young people throughout the research process. > “The sessions really engaged the students. Making their own school gave me a lot to think about also which I took back to the senior leadership team” – _Teacher in participating school_ The diverse experiences of young participants revealed rich insights into what shapes a sense of belonging in schools. These insights touch on key areas such as friendships, behaviour management, the design of school buildings, and the unique experiences of ethnic minority pupils. Beyond fundamental values like acceptance, respect, inclusion, and support, young people also emphasized the importance of emotions such as safety, pride, and enjoyment in cultivating a sense of belonging. This research highlighted the deeply personal and subjective nature of school belonging, raising important questions about how schools might effectively monitor and nurture it. ## A fresh approach to engaging pupils In preparation for the project, we consulted experts on potential research methods. We then tested possible approaches with pupils to see what would work best. The final mixed-method research approach included: * **Co-design workshops  **where Year 10s designed their ideal school in small groups * **Video diaries and interviews**  with Year 10s * **Semi-structured interviews**  with parents and members of school staff * **A survey**  for all Year 10s to complete at each school Using these four methods ensured that pupils had multiple ways to engage with our research. Video diaries allowed those who preferred confidential sharing to participate one-to-one, while surveys offered complete anonymity and a broader view of the year group. To gain a comprehensive understanding of pupil experiences, we also conducted semi-structured interviews with parents and staff to gain deeper insights into the challenges of fostering belonging at school and home. ## Striking the balance between imagination and reality Before the co-design workshops at schools, pupils completed a sensory walk around their school, marking areas they liked or disliked explaining why on a map. The sensory maps provided a way into the modelling activity and sparked discussions on belonging. This was accessible in nature since it asked pupils about something they were likely to talk about a lot, leading to meaningful conversations. During the workshop sessions, pupils used our co-design toolkit to build models of their ideal school highlighting the value of tangible and interactive methods. The toolkit included laser cut shapes, natural materials and 3D printed elements that allowed all pupils to engage without concern for their artistic abilities. The blank shapes in the toolkit allowed them to personalise their designs, creating a sense of ownership and creativity. Working in groups, they presented key aspects of their typical school day, uncovering insights into how places, spaces and people shape their sense of belonging. Using a design brief struck a balance between giving pupils the freedom to be imaginative while ensuring their ideas were practical. This collaborative and hands-on approach created an engaging and impactful experience for all involved. One teacher noted their surprise when a typically reserved pupil took the lead in presenting their group's model… > “The activity allowed pupils to take a very reflective role. The resources allowed for really good creativity.” - _Member of the senior leadership team in a participating school_ ## The school of belonging toolkit To encourage more youth engagement, EPIC is working on designing a toolkit based-on this project  It will provide any teacher at any school with the tools and guidance they need to start their own conversations about belonging and to gather valuable insights from pupils. This toolkit will offer a fun and creative way to gather insights from pupils, fostering ongoing discussions about belonging. ## We champion participatory design EPIC works on projects across the government’s education portfolio, including families, early education, schools and skills. We have combined experience in policy design, ethnography, social research, user research, co-design, visual design and systems thinking. Our team ensures decision-makers are presented with policy options containing new perspectives and creative thinking, which have been developed and tested by the people affected across the policy system. Engaging children and young people in this way involves creating inclusive opportunities for traditionally overlooked or excluded groups. It’s about finding accessible methods to empower them and giving them an active role in shaping policy conversations that impact their lives. If you would like to learn more about EPIC’s work you can contact the team on: epic.team@education.gov.uk _NB. Please note that this blog post only refers to research findings, and those findings do not reflect official government policy_. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

UK Civil Service’s Policy Design Community are now 1000 people strong! Our community members are officials who work in over 165 UK Government organisations. They are passionate about how design is modernising how governments make public policies and services …and you can join the community here. ## **A bias to action** Not only do our community members connect through our monthly newsletters and meet-ups, they also advocate for design in the public sector through this blog and our monthly speaker series. At its heart, our community is about improving design practice. So it’s our working groups – where people come together to design – that members value the most. We currently have over 60 community members volunteering in working groups on events and education who are producing groundbreaking, long-term design infrastructure for governments everywhere. ## **A busy year ahead** We also have a fantastic board of over 30 design leaders who set our direction of travel each year. They’ve just fixed our strategy for 2025/26 …and it’s going to be a landmark year for the community. Besides our usual monthly mix of community activities and networking, this year we have two big milestones to strive for… ## **Building cross-government design networks** The World Design Organisation’s international congress is coming to London for the first time in 50-years. It will be hosted by Design Council, and we are an official part of the welcoming committee. We will be hosting a series of events focused on government design including sector-specific mini conferences, residency at London Design Biennale, and hosting a side-conference as part of World Design Congress …and we’ll be inviting our policy design colleagues in other governments to take part. ## **Next generation design capability** In 2025, we will launch a new school of design. Policy and service designers in UK Civil Service are joining forces to teach the next generation of designers in the public sector. This builds on many years of research and practice about how designers make public policies and services. We will teach, accredit, and value those skills so that designers are seen as a critical investment for public organisations and ministries of finance. ## **Join an incredible community** If you have a gov.uk email address, then you can join government’s most innovative network to build your own design practice and drive change in governments - so that citizens get more meaningful outcomes. Join the community here. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

When you think of a kitchen, what words come to mind? What about when you think of a classroom? Or a game of football? Chances are, the words you think of are nouns. Objects – like sink, food, freezer. Whiteboard, desks. Ball, goalposts, pitch. As humans, we naturally turn to objects to help orient ourselves in the world. When we look through a shop window, it’s the objects we see inside which tell us whether that shop sells pet food or DIY supplies. That’s the philosophy behind object-oriented user experience, or OOUX. Humans think in objects. And we need tangible, recognisable objects to help make sense of the physical spaces we’re in. That’s true for digital spaces, too. ## Citizens struggle to find what they need Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs’ policy design lab works on the farming programme, trialling innovative, experimental methods to tackle complex policy and delivery challenges. A few months ago, we turned our attention to the digital services and information we’re offering to farmers. We deal with a lot of objects. We support farmers to carry out sustainable initiatives on their farms, offering funding and grants to help them buy equipment, build stores, repair buildings, care for livestock, and carry out environmentally friendly agricultural practices. When it comes to representing all these things in a digital space, it can get busy. Farmers have told us our content can be hard to find and understand. They’ve said that sometimes, it’s hard to know if they’ve found everything they need. They’re not always sure how farming rules, or funding schemes, apply to their personal situations. As a result, interacting with digital services from government can get frustrating, and take up precious time. ## An object-oriented approach to services Designers in government have lived by the mantra that good services are verbs, bad services are nouns. This is a design principle that’s enshrined in the government’s Service Manual. The reality is that citizens are still confused by the name of some public services – including some which are verb-led. For a citizen searching the internet, the significant hook in Apply for a provisional driving licence is not ‘apply’. And nor is it ‘driving licence’. It’s both. I might need to ‘do’ lots of things when it comes to my driving licence – _renew_ it, _apply_ for it, _return_ it. But I’ll probably also need to use those verbs to ‘do’ other things too. I might renew my passport. Apply for a visa. Return a tax form. In this example, neither noun nor verb are doing the heavy lifting – they’re both important. But it’s easy to get caught up in the naming of things – and worry about which is ‘correct’. Ultimately, if we don’t know how the user perceives the world – or describes the actions they need to do on objects – then we won’t be able to design something that meets their needs. So in this project, before we even began thinking about interactions with government, we started by mapping farmers’ physical world, from their perspective. ## What matters to farmers As a policy lab, we started exploring how we could make this complex digital landscape simpler, and more intuitive, for farmers. That’s where OOUX came in. We imagined how our digital offer might look if we framed it through the lens of objects – through the core concepts which matter to our users. If a farmer comes to us looking for the rules on storing slurry, or the funding they could get for building a new slurry store, or guidance on using a slurry separator, then they’ll need to go to 3 separate places. But what would happen if all that information could be found in one, connected place? That’s what we set out to investigate. ## More strategic, user-focused information Through a series of 3 workshops, we stress-tested the OOUX method on colleagues in the farming programme, to understand how it might work for different policy teams, and whether colleagues saw value in the approach. Together, we developed an object map – a diagram of some of the objects which hold real-life value to the farmers accessing our information. We mapped out how those objects relate to each other, and the actions users need to take on those objects in the digital space. We also considered what key pieces of information users need to know about these objects, in order to meet their goals. We sketched-out what our content might look like if it were framed through the objects on the map. As we did this, we interrogated – what difference does that make? How could this framing reduce duplication? Does it make things more intuitive for users? And how feasible would it be to develop content this way, going forward? We started to get a sense of some of the ways this object-oriented approach might make things more intuitive to farmers. Some workshop participants thought this was a more strategic, user-focused way of displaying our information. Some thought it could make our internal processes more efficient and joined-up. ## Continuous iteration We were still left with questions... How would we feasibly map out all the objects important to farmers? How could something so huge be usable? How do we make such a fundamental change to the way we conceive of our digital offering? This project was a successful way of quickly interrogating a method, putting it into practice and seeing what came out. While we started to see the value of OOUX, we still need more evidence before we can quantify the value it will have for farmers accessing our digital information. Those will be the next steps – testing further, quantifying the value, and understanding the real impact this method has on making our information easier to find and use. Since this project, the farming programme’s content improvement team are further exploring the OOUX approach. Working with the behavioural insights team, they’ve produced new drafts of some of our regulatory farming information, using an object-oriented approach. They’re in the process of testing these drafts, to get an evidence-based understanding of what difference OOUX could make to our farming information. Go to the OOUX website to learn more about the object-oriented approach. What do you think? We'd love to hear from you.…leave your comments below! ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

I like to think of our work on the UK’s courts system as double-faceted. My team (Ministry of Justice’s Digital Justice System Team) is working to improve outcomes for people who are experiencing legal issues like evictions, divorce and other family issues. On the one hand, there is a very real policy problem of a system potentially unable to cope with additional pressures stemming from increasing demands on courts and tribunals, some of which do not need to be there. On the other, there is a very real human problem of people going through a deeply traumatising event like losing their home and falling into a vortex of compounding issues, like homelessness, family breakdown, loss of employment and more. The two are of course intimately linked. If many disputes do not need to go to court to be resolved and can be addressed early, then is there an opportunity to spare both parties from going in front of a judge? And can we actually think of this in the context of potential preventive measures that would resolve the problem before it explodes into a full-blown dispute? ## Mapping the experience of citizens We arrived at this framing – highly interesting from a departmental business perspective – by deploying the user-centred policy design approach. We started by going through a plethora of existing research, both internal and external. We spoke with subject matter experts across Whitehall, we took part in workshops with external experts such as ombudsmen, dispute resolution providers, third and legal sector, as well as countless meetings with anyone with some expertise in this field. This led us to developing a map that traces the journey that users go through as they get evicted. What is most interesting is that, as I was designing the map, I started with my traditional policy hat on: where does MoJ interest begin? “The answer is clear”, I thought, “it starts when the tenant receives an eviction notice”. Upon reflection, and much research, I realised that the journey for people does not actually begin there, but starts much earlier, with a change (or deterioration) in the relationship between tenant and landlord. We continued to work our way through the whole journey, thinking of all possible actions the parties could take and identifying as many pain-points we could throughout the entire journey. By the end of it, we had a very specialised understanding of how users move through this journey, what challenges they face and, perhaps most importantly in this context, where and why problems begin to appear in the relationship between tenant and landlord. If we want to adopt a preventative approach to legal disputes, we need to understand users not as abstract entities that move through the system, but as real people facing real problems. ## User-centred design drives meaningful change At its core, user-centred policy design rests on the idea that change needs to be driven by user needs. This is not a complex, nor controversial, concept. Yet, this approach often takes the backseat in the world of policymaking, where there is a finite amount of time to deliver on manifesto commitments and urgent priorities. Indeed, user-centred policy design is little understood, and policymaking is still widely driven by the commitment to solutions that are based on pre-existing assumptions. This means that sometimes our policies do not meet the objectives they were set out to achieve, with money being spent on something that has not delivered the best outcome for the people it was intended for. User-centred policy design entails understanding user needs in the context of their real-life experiences and develop a solution that is rooted in empirical evidence. In the context of our work, we strive to understand how and why problems experienced by people exist within the context of the wider journey they embark upon when trying to resolve a legal dispute. In doing so, we are able to identify opportunities to deliver meaningful change and provided services that truly reflects what people need. ## A practical tool for policymakers This was the driving force behind our work to create an ecosystem map of the civil, family and tribunals justice system. It is the first-ever interactive representation of user journeys through the complexities of our system …and the most accurate too. For the first time, the ministry had a user journey that is truly reflective of people’s experience, moving beyond the traditional assumption that users follow a linear sequence of steps that takes them from experiencing to resolving their legal disputes. People are often curious about the different ways this tool can be used, and two things immediately come to mind. First, it is a new framework that policymakers can adopt to understand where exactly in the user journey that changes to the system can be more effective. The map enables an appreciation of how different parts of a situation or problem are connected and how they influence each other, thereby allowing colleagues to address system-wide problems and produce interventions that have the most impact. Second, the map brings together decades of internal and external research on user behaviours, including the structural and behavioural challenges people experience as they try to resolve their problems. Anyone who works across the civil, family or tribunals justice system can rely on it to understand how users perceive, move across, and operate the services we provide them with. ## Good design underpins real impact From my experience, the territory is still somewhat uncharted. We are the first fully multidisciplinary team in the MoJ and, though the learning curve has been very steep, we are now in a place where we can have a real impact in exploring and testing solutions that really work for people. Yet, this approach is still perceived as fairly experimental, bordering on academic, in more traditional policy settings.  The real test will be how we reconcile the fast-paced, often reactive nature of policymaking, with a more evidence-based and proactive approach to it that by nature is more time-consuming. But there can be little doubt that there is a growing appetite for this approach to policy, as evidenced by our Government’s recent emphasis on innovation. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, spoke at length of multidisciplinary “test and learn” teams, “to experiment and find new and innovative ways to fix problems”. User-centred policy design speaks exactly to this sort of approach, and I, for one, am delighted to be a part of this endeavour. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.

As political decisions grow more complex, and with ecological and social crises looming, it is clearer than ever that state administrations worldwide must be precise, efficient, and above all, relevant to their citizens. It was in this context that nearly five years ago, the Latvian State Chancellery launched the Innovation Laboratory initiative. In November 2024, continuing in that same vein, the Latvian Innovation Laboratory organized a visit by members of the Latvian state administration to design labs in the UK government. The Latvian delegation in Westminster As though to underscore the need for user-friendly public policy, this visit happened during public demonstrations against the introduction of a new inheritance tax on agricultural assets. Amid the “farmer protests,” sometimes even navigating through police-controlled crowds, 17 high-level civil servants from Latvia sought insights on how design is applied in government, meeting with design organisations across the UK’s public sector. The visit was hosted by the UK Civil Service’s Policy Design Community and we met policy design teams from Department for Business and Trade, Department for Education, Home Office, HM Revenue & Customs, and Ministry of Justice. All the civil servants who participated seem to have gained valuable perspectives. Observing how interdisciplinary, upstream design work can help tackle contemporary challenges in state governance provided a new way of looking at their own roles. As often happens in the public sector, the real impact of this visit may take years to fully emerge. Yet the overarching themes from the trip could be of interest to many, offering both an alternative viewpoint on UK design work and a snapshot of how designers operate in the UK public sector as a whole. ## **Design hangover …the different views of design** As Malcolm Beattie (ex head of Northern Ireland’s Innovation Lab) once said, “the currency of public sector design is public value.” It is evident that incorporating design into government can generate unique insights, making services more cost-effective and better received by citizens. However, harnessing the full potential of government designers can be difficult because what design processes entail is often misunderstood. This can lead to friction between design labs and key stakeholders outside the “design bubble,” requiring extra effort to clarify design’s meaning and value—or, in the worst cases, threatening the very existence of these labs. One lab lead described this challenge as working with a “design hangover” from the 20th century—a lingering assumption that design is purely industrial and only exists to produce tangible objects. In the public sector, there is sometimes an inertia favouring a linear approach to problem-solving, one that assumes a “product” is the only way to address an issue …a viewpoint fundamentally at odds with a designer’s mindset. Designers love the problem, not the solution. They operate at the intersection of why, where, and for whom. Reducing designers to merely creating new (and, of course, aesthetically pleasing) objects overlooks the deeper value they can provide. Likewise, the role of testing is often misinterpreted. Prototyping and testing are core parts of the design process, allowing ideas to be validated quickly and inexpensively while gathering strong feedback. Yet testing is not always a concluding phase; it can take place at the beginning, middle, or end of building a solution. This sometimes clashes with a public sector culture that often emphasizes meetings and discussion before action, creating misalignment between policymakers and designers. One designer summed it up succinctly: if a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand meetings. Conversations about a healthy design ecosystem also frequently involve how failure is perceived. A systematic fear of failure contradicts one of design’s central principles: if design is done well, every outcome—predicted or not—yields valuable lessons. Sometimes, the best “solution” is to create no product at all. In a worldview where design is only a product rather than a process, truly understanding the problem takes a back seat to delivering some form of “solution,” even though that understanding is a prerequisite for any good outcome. Welcome from the UK Civil Service ## **Systematize, embed, communicate** Keeping these factors in mind, many discussions circled back to the million-dollar question: how do we convey the need for—and the value of—design methods to professionals unfamiliar with them? The challenge of systematizing design work, integrating it into existing practices, and presenting results in a universally understandable format is common to all design or innovation labs. Nearly every lab we spoke with highlighted the importance of having a clear vision at the outset of a project, no matter its scale. A clear vision links the project to governmental priorities or to the host institution’s internal strategy, enabling labs to bring the right methods to the right problems rather than forcing a problem to fit a predefined methodology. A clear vision should also translate into actionable goals. Goals serve not only as guides for achieving results but also as the basis for success metrics. These metrics, besides helping evaluate a lab’s internal work, can be communicated in ways that resonate with a broader audience. Many labs note that success often hinges on speaking “the language of Finance Ministries.” Every public service aims to make life better for citizens, but providing concrete data on exactly how this will happen leaves less room for doubt. Moreover, outcomes rooted in theory and academic research—and demonstrated through metrics reflecting either success or failure—are potent communication tools for the public. Many labs operate in environments where political priorities shift frequently, and publicly accessible success stories can help safeguard their work when new political winds blow. ## **Understanding the user** Remaining in close contact with citizens is another reason design labs are unique and irreplaceable within government. One of the main advantages of applying design to problem-solving is that it takes users’ needs and experiences into account, providing solutions accordingly. In public services, these users are most often citizens themselves. As a result, many labs emphasize citizen engagement as a key strength. User research expertise and design skills that facilitate testing prototypes with citizens are often at the core of successful UK design lab projects. The approaches for involving citizens in design work were as varied as the labs themselves. Sometimes it was as simple as inviting a group of citizens to share their views over pizza. Other times, labs studied people in their own environments to better understand and empathise with their routines. Others used “low-resolution” environments—digital, virtual, or physical—to see first hand how people interact with a potential solution. Certain labs also pointed out that user research need not be uni-directional: by teaching design skills to the community, labs can uncover insights while also empowering citizens. We came away inspired to incorporate that approach into some of the Latvian Innovation Laboratory’s own projects. Designers sharing insight on policymaking ## **Collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and close connections** Finally, every design lab we visited operated on the principle that the collective capability of a diverse group of professionals outweighs the sum of their individual skills. Each lab took measures to reduce silos, bringing together user researchers, designers, developers, and stakeholders around one table. This arrangement offers numerous benefits. For instance, everyone can bring their expertise to bear early in the process. Design skills are as relevant in conceptual stages as they are in prototyping. User researchers and developers may have insights that, if recognized in the beginning, could save time and resources down the line. Similarly, involving stakeholders at the developmental stage keeps them anchored to the initial problem and clarifies where ownership lies. Moreover, broad participation ensures that each role shares a common vision. In addition to fostering a closer working relationship, it also allows for more efficient hand-offs—for example, from user researchers to designers. Interdisciplinary teamwork can further optimize each contributor’s professional capabilities, particularly for designers. Their essential role in the public sector is bridging the gap between policy and the public. Including designers early in a project lets them perform that role far more effectively. Many design labs are structured to encourage this widespread interaction with policymakers. In short, the Latvian state administration’s visit to these UK design labs provided an eye-opening look at how design methods can support better governance. While the lasting impact of the visit may unfold gradually, the lessons learned—from challenging the “design hangover” to adopting prototypes as communication tools, and from fostering interdisciplinary collaboration to keeping citizens at the heart of design—are relevant to anyone interested in how public services can become more effective and meaningful. ## **Join our community** We use this blog to talk about the work of the multidisciplinary policy design community. We share stories about our work, the thinking behind it and what policymaking might look like in the future. If you would like to read more, then please subscribe to this blog. If you work for the UK's government, then you can you join the policy design community. If you don't work for the UK government, then connect with us on social media at Design and Policy Network and subscribe here to be notified about our monthly speaker events to hear from influential design thought leaders and practitioners.