Abstract
Design for policy discourse is often focused on how design supports policy making in central government. And yet, there are other design practices that are contributing to policy development. We frame our work as designing for policy, design work that is happening outside formal policy space, aimed at impacting policy. This paper presents learnings based on a series of co-design interventions with young people in four English local authorities to a) design age-appropriate Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programmes and b) impact national policy. In expanding what might be considered ‘design for policy’, we hope to draw attention to considerations required when trying to influence policy through the designing of public services. We adopt an infrastructuring approach to help us learn about and influence policy whilst also delivering value at local and national levels. This paper contributes to ongoing work to understand how designers contribute to policy making.
Keywords
infrastructuring; policy; participatory design; impact
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.805
Citation
Yee, J., Spencer, N., and Anne Defeyter, M. (2024) Designing as Infrastructuring to Impact Policy, in Gray, C., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.805
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Designing as Infrastructuring to Impact Policy
Design for policy discourse is often focused on how design supports policy making in central government. And yet, there are other design practices that are contributing to policy development. We frame our work as designing for policy, design work that is happening outside formal policy space, aimed at impacting policy. This paper presents learnings based on a series of co-design interventions with young people in four English local authorities to a) design age-appropriate Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programmes and b) impact national policy. In expanding what might be considered ‘design for policy’, we hope to draw attention to considerations required when trying to influence policy through the designing of public services. We adopt an infrastructuring approach to help us learn about and influence policy whilst also delivering value at local and national levels. This paper contributes to ongoing work to understand how designers contribute to policy making.