Abstract
This paper delves into questions related to the participation of vulnerable groups in policymaking, providing a snapshot of common trends and themes in this area. During a DRS 2022 Conversation session, titled ‘Beyond tokenistic approaches: how can engaging with vulnerable groups shape the policy-making process?’, participants were encouraged to engage with the above-mentioned questions by making use of a toolkit including prompts, thinking hats, and insight sheets where they captured their main insights. Key findings highlight the need for similar forums for safe and open discussions, as well as the lack of agreement around language use, calling for a shared effort to build a more mindful set of vocabulary around participation. Other relevant themes include the need to furtherly examine the topic under consideration, move past tokenistic inclusion, acknowledge and challenge power dynamics, rethink the role of the designer, as well as to take into account non-humans in policymaking.
Keywords
design for policy, participation, tokenism, power dynamics, facilitation
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.918
Citation
Pau, S., and Villaman, N. (2022) Beyond tokenistic approaches: How can engaging with vulnerable groups shape the policy process?, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 27 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.918
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
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Beyond tokenistic approaches: How can engaging with vulnerable groups shape the policy process?
This paper delves into questions related to the participation of vulnerable groups in policymaking, providing a snapshot of common trends and themes in this area. During a DRS 2022 Conversation session, titled ‘Beyond tokenistic approaches: how can engaging with vulnerable groups shape the policy-making process?’, participants were encouraged to engage with the above-mentioned questions by making use of a toolkit including prompts, thinking hats, and insight sheets where they captured their main insights. Key findings highlight the need for similar forums for safe and open discussions, as well as the lack of agreement around language use, calling for a shared effort to build a more mindful set of vocabulary around participation. Other relevant themes include the need to furtherly examine the topic under consideration, move past tokenistic inclusion, acknowledge and challenge power dynamics, rethink the role of the designer, as well as to take into account non-humans in policymaking.