Abstract
While design has gained significant interest in the public sector in recent years, it has yet to gain real traction. Even in countries seen as frontrunners, design has not become mainstream practice and its potential to meaningfully address public issues remains largely unrealized. One of the main reasons for this is that designers find it difficult to legitimize design. In this study, we conducted eight interviews with designers to explore how they attempt to gain legitimacy for the outcomes of their work. We adopted an argumentation lens to identify the various legitimation strategies employed. Rather than individual strategies, we present their underlying mechanisms. Nine mechanisms emerged, grouped into three categories: conceptual, relational, and situational. Interestingly, designers often draw on their designerly capabilities in legitimizing their work. Hence, although design is often said to struggle with matters of power, this study highlights that design holds its own form of power.
Keywords
public sector design, legitimacy, legitimation mechanisms, argumentation theory, design reasoning
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1495
Citation
Brinkman, G., and Wennekers, E. (2026) Not another design that ends up in a drawer: mechanisms to legitimize design outcomes in the public sector, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1495
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Not another design that ends up in a drawer: mechanisms to legitimize design outcomes in the public sector
While design has gained significant interest in the public sector in recent years, it has yet to gain real traction. Even in countries seen as frontrunners, design has not become mainstream practice and its potential to meaningfully address public issues remains largely unrealized. One of the main reasons for this is that designers find it difficult to legitimize design. In this study, we conducted eight interviews with designers to explore how they attempt to gain legitimacy for the outcomes of their work. We adopted an argumentation lens to identify the various legitimation strategies employed. Rather than individual strategies, we present their underlying mechanisms. Nine mechanisms emerged, grouped into three categories: conceptual, relational, and situational. Interestingly, designers often draw on their designerly capabilities in legitimizing their work. Hence, although design is often said to struggle with matters of power, this study highlights that design holds its own form of power.