Conversation Title
First Catalyst, Second Catalyst, THIRD CATALYST
University of the Arts London, University of Brighton, University of Birmingham
contact: email@brighton.ac.uk
Keywords: design thinking; policy making; interdisciplinarity; policy labs
Conversation Overview
This conversation discusses an emerging context in which design expertise is being applied – the making of government policy. It reviews existing research and identifies the claim that design changes the nature of policy making. The paper then adapts a conceptual framework from social studies of science to make sense of the encounter between design and policy making. The paper applies this lens to an empirical account of design being applied to policy making in a team in the UK government. The findings are that in addition to supporting officials in applying design approaches, the team’s work shapes the emergence of hybrid policy making practices, and at times problematizes the nature of policy making. It does this within logics of accountability, innovation, and reordering. The contribution is to provide empirical detail and a nuanced account of what happens in these encounter between design expertise and policy making practice.
This conversation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
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This conversation will take place on XXX XXth June at DRS2016, find it in the conference programme